The Long Beach City College women’s water polo team won the school’s first state championship since 2019 on a rainy afternoon in their own pool, taking down Santa Barbara 11-6 to claim the CCCAA title. The Vikings wrap up a 39-2 season with a dominant second half, outscoring the Vaqueros 7-2 in the final 16 minutes of the game.
It was a special day for the Vikings aquatics program and head coach Chris Oeding, the longtime head man for LBCC who’s also a US National Team assistant coach and a Century Club Hall of Famer. Oeding’s women’s team won their first state title since 2006, and it was the first for either Vikings team since 2016. The win came in their own brand new aquatic facility.
“To be able to have a facility that we’re proud of, it hasn’t really even hit yet what this means,” said Oeding. “We haven’t played a home playoff game in our own pool in over 20 years, we didn’t have a facility to do that. To host a state tournament, to make that tournament and win the championship–I don’t think you could have scripted it any better. It’s super, super special.”
The Vikings and Vaqueros were knotted at 4-4 at halftime, with a drizzle beginning to coat the new aquatics complex at LBCC. It was a moment for the Vikings to rely on the special chemistry that’s carried them to such a successful season.
“You can tell when a team is a team outside of the water, from inside the water,” said Vikings leader Olivia Slavens, who had two goals in the win. “This group of girls–we took a deep breath, we said it’s a 0-0 game, it’s the third quarter. We have half a game to give them Hell. That was our goal, give them Hell. Keep it tight, take the refs out of the game, and keep ramming that hammer down.”
The third quarter was as dominant as could be, as LBCC took complete control. The Vikings won the quarter 5-0 with three scores in the first three minutes, including a long-distance snipe as well as a skip shot from Jennifer Connelly. They took a 9-4 lead into the fourth quarter and successfully played defense, with goalie Avery Reyes making a couple of nice saves.
Connelly would score her third goal late on a time-wasting play where she noticed the Santa Barbara goalie was out of cage and threw it in from half-pool; Slavens did the same with 43 seconds left on the clock.
The Vikings were led by three goals from Lola Annear and Jennifer Connelly plus the deuce from Slavens, the team’s Conference Player of the Year who scored more than 100 goals this season for LBCC. Slavens, a Los Al alum, said this year’s Vikings were a special group.
“We just get along so well, we crack jokes 24/7, and we know we’re a great team,” she said. “We made sure that this season we kept it fun. We had fun all year. We played as a team, and our goal was to kick ass. And we did.”
Oeding said he knew early on that this year’s team was a special one.
“I’ve told them that they’re a special group from the beginning,” he said. “They reminded me a lot of the team we had 20 years ago in 2004 that won a state championship. I don’t want to say that it’s destined but it just felt like it was our time…you want to wring their neck sometimes, but they show up when they needed to. Any time we’re in a do or die, they showed up. That’s a testament to this group–they got stronger together and didn’t fall apart.”
The state championship is the 94th in school history in any sport, and the first in any sport for the Vikings since the 2019 men’s volleyball team.
