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Santa Ana Coach Maer Cruz is congratulated by his players after Wednesday’s win. (PHOTOS: Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone).
Santa Ana High School’s boys water polo team, the top-seeded squad in the CIF Division 4 playoffs, gave its fans plenty to cheer about Wednesday afternoon.
The Saints led from the start and went on to defeat Murrieta Mesa 18-15 in the quarterfinals at the campus pool, advancing to the semifinals for the first time in school history. Santa Ana will meet the winner of the Glendale-Cate match Tuesday.
The bleacher section at Santa Ana was full and many fans stood and cheered when the final whistle blew. Many formed a line to congratulate the Saints players after the win.
“It’s the first time and I feel very blessed knowing that my kids get to experience that,” said Coach Maer Cruz. “From the beginning, these kids always wanted to stick together, like a family. One of my kids gets sick, another one says ‘I’m going to go to the store and get you some medicine.’
“They take care of each other both in the pool and out of the pool, that’s what makes it special is that we treat each other like a family and I really like that.”
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Santa Ana (28-3) was led by seniors Yediel Cecilio, who had eight goals and Isaiah Simmons, who had four goals. Junior goalkeeper Paul Gonzalez had numerous big saves and key blocks and was assisted by a strong defensive effort from his teammates.
Joseph Zinn scored five goals and Adam Paine and Jake Johnson had two goals each to lead Murrieta Mesa (19-13.
While the final margin was just three goals, the outcome was never in doubt as Santa Ana raced to a 6-2 lead after one quarter and a 10-6 edge at the half.
Santa Ana came out strong in the third quarter moving out to a 14-6 lead. Matthew Macedo and Cecilio each had two goals.
The Saints led 14-8 going into the final quarter and extended their lead to 17-9 in the fourth quarter.
“It’s very surprising that we are actually going to semifinals after all these years,” said Gonzalez, the goalkeeper. “We’ve had teams who have gone far, but not as far as we’ve gone today. We have a team who is 100 percent capable of winning CIF. It’s just incredible to be their goalkeeper, it’s an honor really.”
Hard works has paid off for the team, which captured the first league title in school history with a perfect league record and has captured playoff wins over Citrus Valley (9-6), Buena Park (15-14) and Murrieta Mesa.
“With these guys, we goof off sometimes, but there’s always that time when we come to practice, willing to practice and we’re all happy to practice,” Gonzalez said. “We have our on and off days, but either way, the hard work pays off in the end. Murrieta Mesa put up a very good fight today, it was a really good lead that we had, we slowed down a little bit, but we increased the lead more, so that’s what counts.”
“It feels good, but when you realize how much work we’ve put into this, all that work is finally paying off,” added Cecilio, the team’s leading scorer Wednesday.
“We did a lot to get here. I got a taste of CIF (playoffs) and we lost in the first round, and it hurt and we started practicing and started doing (off-season) tournaments as a team and we started playing more and more and all that work from that point to now makes this win feel awesome, because we put in so much work to get here. I think we did a good job with our goalie, our sets and their shooters on the outside.”
Simmons, a big offensive contributor, was also pleased with the win.
“It was tough, but what our coach says, whoever wins is the one who makes the least mistakes, so I think we locked in and we made the least mistakes, that’s how we won,” added Simmons.
The players added that Cruz, the coach has been a fantastic leader for the team because of his dedication to them and how he cares for each player, creating a family atmosphere. Cruz became the Saints head coach in 2007 and was assistant from 1998-2006. He graduated from Santa Ana in 1995.
“My coach is someone who has dedicated himself to this program,” said Cecilio. “One thing we say to the team, ‘he looks good, we look good, our whole team looks good.’”
“He cares about all of us,” Gonzalez added. “We’re all literally one big family and Maer is definitely 100 percent a very caring father to all of us.”
—Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com
