End of the Year Awards

Chosen by their teammates, here are the award winners for the 2009 Chaminade Red Devils...

The Conner Keefe Player of the Year:
JACK MEARA

The Patrick St. Cin Offensive Player of the Year:
ED ROSE

The Jake Entwistle Defensive Player of the Year:
JAKE ENTWISTLE

The Jon Fernandez Most Improved Player:
CHRIS LAUBER

The Jack Benage Hardest Worker Award:
CHRIS WATKINS

The Blake Stabler Rookie of the Year:
JAKE SCHOTT


For reference, the 2008 winners:

The Conner: Michael Kubik
The St. Cin: Michael Kubik
The Jake: Jake Entwistle
The Fern: Chris Duncan
The Jack: Jack Benage
The Blake: Chris Watkins

The permanent plaques are currently being made and will be hung in KB's office.

MICDS Pics

On the right side of the page, you will see picutres of our second round game against MICDS. These were taken by Kirkwood coach Reza Benham. As you can tell, he's really good. My favorite is probably Meara in mid-shot, although there are some good ones of Lauber making saves and of the bench watching the game (do all the boys bite their fingernails?). I would like to thank Coach Benham for supplying these pictures free of charge. If you would like a print of any of these pictures, please go to http://shariphotos.com.

Sea of Red Tonight

Tonight at 6:30pm at the St. Peter's Rec-Plex, the Red Devils take on #1 ranked SLUH in the semi-finals of the state tournament. I would like all Chaminde supporters to wear as much RED clothing as they can put on their body. SLUH will likely bring a horde of students painted blue, so we need to counter that with our own Sea of Red.

See you tonight.

Chaminade 8 - MICDS 6

The back of senior captain Jack Meara is quite strong, as he carried his entire team to victory tonight. 6 goals in all, including his first backhand of the year, with 3 coming in the first quarter as the Red Devils jumped out to an early lead against MICDS and didn't look back.

The game plan was to minimize first team all-conference player Parker Condie and make his teammates beat us. For most of the game, we played a drop defense which worked very well by preventing Parker from getting the ball in front of the goal. Although there were some breakdowns when the Rams drove through, for the most part, the MICDS offense was held at bay. Kudos to everyone who touched the water tonight for playing solid team defense.

The two major breakdowns came in ejections and in communication. Four kickouts matches our season high and MICDS capitalized on three of them. Communication, especially LOUD communication, is something we have struggled with all year. Otherwise, we played about as good a game as we could, aggressive offensively and sound defensively.

The Red Devils came to play tonight and the hard work all year paid off when they needed it to. We stuck together, never got down on ourselves when the Rams made a late comeback, and we held on for the program's 5th final four in 6 years. As I was quoted as saying last year: from this point on it's all gravy, so we should just have fun with the rest of the season. All year long, I believe we are the team best equipped to play with SLUH and Friday night is our chance to prove it.

Goals: Meara - 6, Entwistle - 1, Glauber - 1
Assists: Glauber - 2, Watkins - 2, Duncan - 1, Rose - 1, Schott - 1
Steals: Entwistle - 3, Meara - 3, Duncan - 2, Lauber - 1, Rose - 1, Schott - 1, Watkins - 1
Kickouts: Entwistle - 1, Meara - 1, Rose - 1, Watkins - 1
Saves: Lauber - 11

POTG: Meara

Up Next: Final Four on Friday night.

Quick Notes

The Missouri Water Polo Banquet is Saturday May 30th. It will be precluded by the Senior All-Star Game and Skill Competition. This will be the first ever Skills Competition and it will include jump balls, swim-offs and hardest shot. After the game, there will be dinner and a banquet where the All-District teams and the "Of The Year" awards are announced. The registration form for the banquet is linked from the home page of http://mowaterpolo.com.

Kirkwood's coach, Rez Benham, is also a great photographer and he has taken some photos of our games this year and last year. He will be at the pool on Wednesday for our game against MICDS as well. I know Mr. Duncan has been taking photos throughout the year, but Rez might have some shots worth taking a look at. His website is http://www.shariphotos.com.

See you tomorrow night!

Entwistle Nominated for DPOTY

Chaminade’s senior Jake Entwistle was named as a finalist for Defensive Player of the Year. The voting was done this week and the top three nominees in each category were announced. The winners, along with the All-Distict teams, will be announced at the Missouri Water Polo Banquet on Saturday, May 30th at MICDS. The Banquet will be precluded by the Senior All-Star Game and Skills Competition. To attend, please go to http://mowaterpolo.com and on the front page you will see a link to the registration form. I hope you can make it out to watch the game and support Jake in his nomination.

The other finalists (in alphabetical order):
Coach of the Year: Paul Baudendistel, Rich Davison, Gerard Gonthier
Offensive Player of the Year: Parker Finlinson, John Heafner, Matt Stipanovich
Defensive Player of the Year: Matt Baumgartner, Jake Entwistle, Michael O’Neill
Female Player of the Year: Grace Kenyon, Demi Nichoalds, Taylor Rackovan
Player of the Year: William Page, Kyle Schnoring, Matt Stipanovich

All-Conference Teams Named

The All-Conference selections were announced today. Out of respect for the players on other teams (they should hear it from their coach), I will only mention our boys:

First Team: Jack Meara
Second Team: Jake Entwistle, Ed Rose

Congratulations guys! All three of you are very deserving of the honor. All-District voting began yesterday and the results won't be announced until the Missouri Water Polo Banquet on May 30th.

DeSmet 9 - Chaminade 6

Riding high off of yesterday's victory over Parkway North, the Red Devils gave a tremendous effort against #2 DeSmet. The Red Devils overcame two separate three goals leads in the first half to tie the game 6-6 after 3 quarters. In the fourth quarter, DeSmet tightened up defensively and a couple of Red Devil mental mistakes led to two DeSmet goals by junior Matt Stipanovich off a kickout and a 5M penalty shot. The Red Devils could not recover and gave up one more at the end as DeSmet shut down the Chaminade offense in the 4th.

This game boils down what it usually boils down to, mental mistakes. Our effort is always there, as we work hard for 4 quarters at both ends. We are a smart team that can adjust when teams run different schemes (i.e. when DeSmet started dropping on the 2-meter, we started driving through to move the drop man and started to shoot more aggressively), but there are often times when we don't adjust (we refused to help on the 2M when almost all of their goals came from the hole). We certainly have the ability to play mistake free (the win v. Lindbergh at Rec-Plex, yesterday v. North), but we haven't been able to consistently bring that focus every game.

That said, we are playing VERY well right now and if we can get a healthy Danny Faust (flu-like symptoms) and Ed Rose (swollen knee) we can beat anybody. For the 8th time this year, Jake Entwistle was our player of the game. Not only did he do a good job on arguably the best player in St. Louis (Stipanovich), Jake also chipped in two goals and two assists. Jake is probably our most talented player and when he makes the effort to pitch in on the offensive end, this team is lethal.

Things that went right:

• Shooting aggressiveness - finally, we are confident taking shots when we are open. Now we just need to do it sooner and off of cross-goal passes
• Protecting the ball - for the most part the passing was better in the half court, although too many times we would set the ball when a defender was sluffing off on the 2-meter. But I recall maybe one perimeter steal by DeSmet.
• Mental toughness - three times we were looking at 3-goal deficits and we roared back on two of them, including taking a brief lead at the end of the third. We never gave up until we ran out of gas after the ejection and 5M calls (the 5M was heavily disputed by me, but we can't let the refs dictate the game for us).

Things that went not so right:

• Counter-attack passing - goalie Chris Lauber was pretty good actually, but during fast breaks, the second pass was too often a 50-50 ball, thrown too long or too high or sometimes too late. This can only be fixed by the boys using their legs to get out of the water and passing with confidence. Good passes are always thrown with confidence and aren't "wished".
• Shooting accuracy - Entwistle stepped up with some big outside shots, but he also had 6 others miss. Ed Rose was also 2 for 8. Chris Watkins was 1 for 4 (although his goal was a GREAT shot). In total, the team shot 23%. I think there might be a mental barrier that comes with playing DeSmet. We need to play looser against them.
• Helping the 2M - if your man isn't a threat, don't guard him
• Fouling outside 5M - our Achilles heel

Goals: Entwistle - 2, Rose - 2, Glauber - 1, Watkins - 1
Assists: Entwistle - 2, Hoette - 2, Meara - 1, Rose - 1
Steals: Entwistle - 4, Watkins - 4, Hoette - 3, Lauber - 3, Duncan - 2, Meara - 2, Glauber - 1, Rose - 1
Kickouts: Entwistle - 2
Saves: Lauber - 4

POTG: Entwistle - tied for lead in every field category, except kickouts (which he held the lead all by himself)

Up Next: SLUH @ Lindbergh