LA JOLLA – The story of the 2025-2026 winter girls water polo season is the trajectory of three top teams in San Diego: Long-time cross-town rivals Bishop’s and La Jolla, and a new interloper, Valhalla.
The Knights, under Doug Peabody and Ian Davidson, have reigned supreme for a decade and a half. Far above the fray, physicality to boot.
The pretender La Jolla, the “Little Engine That Could,” is always trying to ascend the mountain and challenge Bishop’s face to face. Sometimes that has worked out better; sometimes, quite a challenge.
The Norsemen have circled in a near-orbit, but this season looked really different — and better. Sets of senior twins all started gelling at the same time. Coach Paola Vizcarra was delighted.
The background to all this is the boys’ programs: La Jolla broke through to sweep Bishop’s and win its first CIF Open Division championship since Open was created almost a decade ago.
On the girls’ side, the Vikings defeated Valhalla 12-10 in a non-league game on Jan. 7, the past holding pretty much true in the present. But then 10 days later, Vizcarra’s crew figured something out, and upset La Jolla at Coggan Family Aquatics Complex, its home pool, 10-5, in a tournament game. The specter of the Big Red-and-Black Monster was dissipated.
Most recently, Vizcarra’s squad defeated coach Tom Atwell’s team in the CIF Open semifinals on Feb. 17, edging them after building a 14-9 lead behind five goals by Gia Jacob and three by lefty Ava Mammo.
They picked the vaunted Viking defense apart. Junior attacker Avaiana Cavaiola had scored two crucial goals to bring the hosts back to within 15-11, then teammate Cora Pfau nearly willed La Jolla back to tie with two late goals. But the rally died at 15-14, as Pfau’s second score floated for a moment on the edge of the goal before drifting in — valuable time on the clock eating away.
The glorious result is that all three teams will enter the Southern California Regionals on Feb. 24.
A major issue in the Bishop’s long-time dominance has been the Knights’ ability to be physical, pushing and shoving within allowable limits to intimidate their opponents and keep them off-balance.
Atwell, the Vikings’ coach, commented on this during the Western League season: “The hardest thing to coach, besides size, is teaching players to be physical who don’t want to be physical.” The Knights easily downed cross-town rival La Jolla 18-8 and 14-6 this season due to this.
Davidson, the Knights’ co-coach, addressed it this way: “We’ve learned the right way to play, and play with each other. They’ve done a really good job of learning how to move together. I think that’s where it starts, and learning what acceptable and unacceptable levels of physicality are within a water polo game.
“There’s a gross style of physicality, and then there’s a way the game should be played. And I think they’ve done a really awesome job of learning to move in the water and learn what the line is between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.”
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