Sacred Heart Prep ends ‘phenomenal’ year in pool prematurely

It wasn’t for a lack of trying.

The CCS Open title game against West Catholic Athletic League rival Bellarmine was postponed four times in a span of six days due to poor air quality caused by the Camp Fire near Chico.

On Tuesday morning, CIF commissioner Duane Morgan announced a co-championship rather than reschedule the game yet again after the CIF state NorCal playoffs in Clovis were also canceled this past weekend.

“They did the right thing waiting until the last minute to see if we could play any of these games,” SHP coach Brian Kreutzkamp said. “So we had to constantly prep over and over again.”

He added: “It’s brutal. It’s really tough on the kids, especially the seniors, that the games got canceled. But it just made it so much worse anticipating playing the game four or five times and then having it being canceled at the last second.

“I think it was pretty mentally taxing on all of us.”

Coming into the season it was hard to know what to expect out of the Gators after losing eight seniors from last year’s squad to graduation.

That doesn’t mean SHP lacked talent, considering 2-meter Andrew Churukian (40 goals, 7 assists) and attacker Larsen Weigle (93 goals, 11 assists) will stay close to home as teammates at Stanford next fall.

“I definitely couldn’t have imagined that,” said Weigle, 17, who remembers 6 a.m. summer practices at the SHP pool as a seventh-grader, with all of his hard work paying off. “I really didn’t know where I was going to end up. I’m super stoked, super happy to able to be fortunate enough to go to Stanford and play at a college like that. And, then, also to do it with one of my best friends, like Andrew.”

“At first it was kind of like, ‘We’ll see what happens here,’ and then as the recruiting process went on it became more and more real and more exciting,” said Churukian, 18, whose older brother Zach played men’s water polo at MIT. “It’s definitely been a dream of mine while playing at the Stanford Water Polo Club and practicing at Avery Aquatic Center.”

 

Add Harvard-bound Walker Seymour (55 goals, 25 assists) to the equation, and this year’s group of eight seniors had plenty of firepower, speed and grit.

“It’s like we had a piece of everything that you need to have a good team,” Kreutzkamp said.

One big question did appear to loom over the Gators: How would Griffen Price hold up between the pipes?

Kreutzkamp hoped to get at least a serviceable effort from the freshman, to the point where he would go unnoticed. Instead, Price’s expedited growth allowed SHP to reach elite status in the state — and the country.

“I was joking around that I’ve never had a freshman goalie my entire career,” said Kreutzkamp, in his 14th year at the helm. “And now I’m starting to look back and wonder if I should’ve earlier, because with the season that he’s had I was just blown away by his maturity.”

Only two teams managed to outscore the Gators (26-2).

Harvard-Westlake accomplished the feat in its own pool in Los Angeles during the championship game of the Elite Eight Tournament, avenging a loss to SHP one day earlier.

The Gators returned to Southern California a few weeks later for the S&R Sports Invitational in Irvine and swept the competition.

As co-host of the 13th annual North vs. South Challenge, SHP advanced to the final for the first time and took care of business in Atherton during a rubber match with Harvard-Westlake.

Its only other setback came in the semifinals of the Memorial Invitational Tournament in San Jose against Campolindo.

“With the schedule that we have put together, it was arguably our best season that we’ve ever had,” Kreutzkamp said. “To only finish the season with two losses, it was pretty impressive.”

“I think we all just kind of meshed together really well,” Churukian said. “We all were having fun and playing for each other.”

“We weren’t too sure how well we were going to do and we started off with the goal that we want to win Open Division CCS finals — and we’ll go from there,” Weigle said. “And it turned into a real special team.”

It’s not ideal to share, but after an outright WCAL title and a trio of triumphs over Bellarmine, it’s safe to imagine SHP would’ve come out on top if the CCS Open Division championship game hadn’t been canceled.

If anything, the Gators would’ve loved nothing more than to take another shot at Campolindo to close out the season with a NorCal Division I trophy.

“Obviously we’re very bummed about not being able to finish out our season the way we would’ve wanted to,” Churukian said. “But we all kind of understand that there’s a bigger thing going on and people are losing their lives and homes.”

 

“It’s bittersweet that we didn’t get to play those two big games, get that rematch,” Weigle said. “But if you’re really going to put things in perspective, it’s just a couple of water polo games. And I’m just really thankful that my house and my teammates’ houses aren’t being affected by the fires and there’s just much bigger things going on that we totally understand why we weren’t able to play.”

From the first postponement until the last cancellation, the Gators never lost perspective.

“The message has been consistent, which is, this is a real bummer, it’s kind of an awkward finish to a phenomenal year, but, you know what, this is a really important life lesson,” Kreutzkamp said. “There’s a lot more important things going on right now in our area and we have to take a step back from athletics and look at that. And understand that, you know what, we actually got it pretty good.”

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