Each year, the Junior Olympics for water polo brings the best teams in the United States together for two weeks of battle for boys and girls in three age groups (14U, 16U, 18U) in two classes — Classic and Championship — based on performance at regional qualifier tournaments. The 14U girl’s all-star team from the Portland area — which included Jamie Robinson from Hood River, an incoming freshman who intends to play on the high school team in the fall — played in the Championship class in Los Angeles and ended with a 3-4 record, earning them 38th place out of 96 teams. The team was coached by Ian Bricken from Tualatin Hills and Dave Robinson from Hood River (Jamie’s father, who coaches the club team in Hood River and will be assisting the high school teams this fall).
The competition venues were “inspiring” as multiple high school pool complexes were utilized, all with outdoor, palm tree-lined, 50-meter Olympic-sized pools, reported Dave Robinson, who added that competition was stiff throughout the tournament.
“It is difficult to compete with the traditional southern and northern California powerhouse teams which typically qualify two full teams (A and B) and sometimes four teams. The player pipelines are huge and competitive, producing rather large and strong fourteen year old girls,” he explained. “The Portland girls were matched up with the sixth-ranked team in the U.S. from Southern California for their first game — an eye-opening 12-3 loss. They fought hard to a 7-4 loss against another highly ranked California team in their second game seeding them in the second tier bracket to compete the remaining three days. Once in the brackets, they went 3-2 for a 14th place finish in the Gold Bracket and 38th overall.”
Jamie Robinson earned a starting spot on the Portland all-star team as an attacker. Lacking the player quantity of other teams, the Portland starters had to play full games most of the time. In her best game, Jamie Robinson scored five goals while tallying two assists.
The Hood River Polo program started just four years ago, and Robinson says that “the results are proof of a growing program,” starting with the high school boys taking second in the state championships last year and “a strong 14U coed team that played in numerous tournaments this summer, highlighted by one undefeated tournament win in Portland.”
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