CHULA VISTA, Jan. 30, 2002 -- Prior to Wednesday’s Metro Conference tournament championship game against defending league champion Bonita Vista, Chula Vista coach Brian Schultz succinctly summarized his team’s fortunes.

“We’ve been working for four years to get to this point,” he said. “We’ve got a good core group of players who have been playing together a while. This is it.”

Four years of hard work and dedication indeed paid off as the Spartans handed the Barons their first-ever league setback, 12-9, to win the title of this year’s tournament and land an automatic entry into the upcoming San Diego Section Division I playoffs.

Bonita Vista had never lost to another Metro team in six years before Wednesday’s climactic showdown, holding off an equally super-charged Chula Vista team, 11-10, in a regular season league game earlier this season.

“It’s about time we beat them. This is what we’ve been working for,” said Chula Vista senior Rosie Carreras, who scored seven goals in Wednesday’s tournament championship game.

“This was to be the year. We did it,” echoed Spartan teammate Vanessa Young, a junior, who has been with the program three years.

Carreras also serves as the school’s Associated Student Body president. There was no shortage of school spirit around the Southwestern College pool.

Nor was there a shortage of spectators. For anyone who might have had doubts about the viability of girls water polo since its relatively recent inception as a separate sanctioned CIF sport, they only had to be in attendance at Wednesday’s tournament finals. Fans ringed the pool, several deep in some spots, and alternately cheered for their respective teams. The atmosphere was as electric as any football or basketball playoff game.

Carreras helped supply the voltage. She had the lone goal in a defensively played first quarter and beat Bonita Vista goalie Malinda Groom on a penalty shot 25 seconds into the second period to give the second-seeded Spartans a 2-0 lead against the top-seeded Barons. Young then scored the first of her two goals in the contest midway through the period to extend the early Chula Vista edge to 3-1.

But just when it looked like the Spartans might be headed on a roll, it was time for Bonita Vista — specifically, freshman Brandy Schlick — to deflate the challenger’s balloon. Schlick, the team’s left-handed utility specialist, went on a rampage, scoring twice in a 43-second span to tie the game and added a third unanswered goal in a 74-second span to give the regular season Metro champions a 4-3 lead.

However, momentum proved to be elusive to maintain in this matchup of two top 10-ranked teams (Bonita Vista entered the game ranked eighth in the Division I field while Chula Vista was ranked 10th). Young scored her second goal to deadlock the game and Nashmil Airy added a goal with 24 seconds to play in the period to give the Spartans a 5-4 halftime lead. Airy’s goal epitomized just how much Chula Vista’s players’ wanted the victory. Covered tightly by a defender off the near post, Airy first put on a spin move and, once having gotten past the BV defender, forced Groom to commit in the one-on-one confrontation. Airy then lobbed the ball inside the far post to break the stalemate.

Both Airy and Carreras hold the school record for most goals scored in one game with nine. Carreras was the team’s unstoppable force in the second half by scoring five of her team’s six goals.

But that wasn’t before Schlick was finished with her own personal barrage that would include three second-half goals and six goals for the game.

Schlick knotted the score at 5-5 with the first goal of the second half, scored with 3:53 left in the third period. But the Baron goal only seemed to wake up the Spartans, who reeled off three unanswered goals to take an 8-5 lead. Gabi Gonzalez notched a power play goal to give Chula Vista a 6-5 lead just 31 seconds after Schlick’s game-tying marker. The goal was a perfect execution of passing around the perimeter, with the ball going from Young on Groom’s left side to Carreras at the point and then to Gonzalez, who scored from Groom’s right. Carreras then added fuel to the flames when she scored two rapid-fire goals 14 seconds apart. She put the Spartans up 7-5 with 1:28 showing on the game clock and then scored off her own steal to give Chula Vista its biggest lead of the night at three goals.

Bonita Vista reached back for pride at this point and made it a guessing game by stunning the Spartans with a pair of consecutive goals to trim the CV lead to 8-7. Brittany Estrada scored with 40 seconds to play in the third period and Marissa Loya tallied just 15 seconds into the final period to make it a one-goal game.

It was time for Carreras to take charge once again. She scored her fifth goal of the game 20 seconds after Loya had scored to bring hope to the Baron faithful and added No. 6 in spectacular fashion to crush those hopes. Swamped by defenders in the two-meter position, Carreras somehow evaded the pressure to score with a backhand shot.

When Laura Lowery scored on a lob shot to the far post with 3:54 to play in regulation time to increase the Spartan lead to 11-7, it was all but apparent that an era in Metro Conference girls water polo had come to an end.

Fittingly, Schlick and Carreras finished out the game’s scoring. Schlick scored back-to-back goals to cut the CV lead to 11-9 and Carreras rounded out the scoring on a penalty shot with 35 seconds to play.

As the seconds counted down, Schultz raised his arms in triumph on the Spartan bench while several male supporters jumped into the pool to celebrate with the victorious Chula Vista team at center tank.

Controlling the excitement level was one thing that Carreras pointed to as the key to the Spartans’ history-making win. “We tend to get too excited and forget what we’re doing. We needed to keep our composure in this game,” she said.

Bonita Vista coach Kelly Falcone was complimentary of the effort put forth by both teams. “I thought both games were great. The girls played their hearts out. A couple lapses on defense — that was it,” she said.

The Barons officially get to raise yet another league championship banner despite the tournament defeat. By conference bylaws, the league champion is determined by regular season record. Bonita Vista earned the banner with an undefeated 6-0 Metro record; Chula Vista was second with a 5-1 league record. Because of their high ranking, the Barons are almost assured an at-large berth in the upcoming playoffs.

Hilltop 9, Mar Vista 5

Rosi Lopez had three goals and one assist and teammate Christy Fox added two goals and two assists to lead third-seeded Hilltop past fourth-seeded Mar Vista in Wednesday’s third-place game. The victorious Lancers twice played back from deficits, snapping a 4-4 tie with five goals in the final period. “It’s a close physical competition between these two teams. Our plays started clicking in the final period,” Hilltop coach Linda McCoy said.

The Lancers had previously defeated the Mariners, 7-6, in the final regular season league game prior to last Saturday’s preliminary-round conference tournament.

Mar Vista, which was led in Wednesday’s game by Maritza Johnson and Melissa Madigan with two goals apiece, held early leads of 2-1 and 3-2. Goals by Johnson and Jane Wiebel helped the Mariners (4-5 in league, 4-7 overall) to the first go-ahead position while Madigan scored to put her team up for a second time. Lopez scored to tie the game, 3-3, at halftime and Jessica Street gave Hilltop (7-3, 8-12) its first lead of the game, 4-3, on a penalty shot early in the third period. Johnson tied the game at 4-4 heading into the final quarter.

Corie Koch scored the first of her two goals in the game just 23 seconds into the fourth period and Fox scored off her own rebound to put the Lancers up by two goals at 6-4. Madigan cut the Hilltop lead to 6-5 with a goal but the Lancers would finish the game with three unanswered scores — two by Lopez and another by Koch.

“We got a little tired. I don’t know if it was being out two to three weeks (because of a campus pool closure) or nervousness,” said Mar Vista coach Chip Case. “You can’t score when you give the ball away. We had the heart to do it but not the umph. Give Hilltop credit.”

Lancer goalie Monica Felix made 11 saves while recording two assists. Rachel Norton scored Hilltop’s second goal in the game while also finishing with three steals.

Notepad

Marianne Paradowski scored Bonita Vista’s first goal in Wednesday’s championship game. She had two goals in the Barons’ 16-0 semifinal win against Mar Vista last Saturday. Schlick led the Barons with three goals and two assists in the semifinal win while Loya, Estrada and Lara Balistreri all scored twice.