Brenda Villa

Amid the chaos of La Canada High's celebration sat goalie Russell Bernstein, quiet and alone. The Spartans had just won the Southern Section Division III water polo championship with a 7-6 victory over two-time defending champion Bell Gardens at the Belmont Plaza pool. The celebration, which included throwing coaches into the pool, was in full swing. But Bernstein sat with a tight grip on the game ball, staring at the patch just given to him by Southern Section assistant commissioner Bill Clark.

The U.S. women's water polo team started with an upset of the Netherlands and now it will get a chance to show that the result really wasn't an upset at all. With a workmanlike performance Wednesday night, the Americans handed winless Kazakhstan its fifth defeat, 9-6, rolling out of the round-robin portion of the Olympic tournament and into the semifinals, and a return engagement Friday night with the Dutch. And the Hollanders, it would appear, might be ripe for the taking again.

La Canada High water polo Coach Larry Naeve may still be standing next to the pool, shaking his head and wondering what happened in the third quarter of his team's 12-11 nonleague loss at Bell Gardens High on Tuesday. The Spartans, ranked No. 1 in Southern Section Division III, outscored No. 2 Bell Gardens in the first, second and fourth quarters. They built a 7-4 lead at halftime and seemingly had command and momentum in a game with the intensity of the playoffs.

LONDON - Adam Krikorian wondered more than once whether becoming coach of the U.S. women's water polo team was a good career move. The former UCLA player and coach took over in March 2009, less than two weeks before the team was to leave for the world championships. He got a wary reception from a group that had long been coached by Guy Baker, who became an administrator before leaving the U.S. program. "When we first started in 2009 we were a disaster. We were torn apart," Krikorian said.

DALLAS — Betsey Armstrong has an anchor tattooed on her right calf. Why it's there, though, she's no longer sure. "There's not a really specific meaning behind it," she says with a shrug. "People ask me all the time if I'm in the Navy. I'm just kind of a water person. " But Brenda Villa, a teammate on the U.S. women's water polo team, says the body art has come to symbolize the role Armstrong has grown into over the last four years, becoming the best goalkeeper in the world and the anchor of a team that is a heavy medal favorite in this summer's Olympic Games.

When athletes from across the Americas take to playing fields and swimming pools in Mexico this month, they'll be guarded by unmanned drones, infrared-equipped Black Hawk helicopters, hundreds of surveillance cameras and more than 11,000 police officers. It's the first time since 1975 that Mexico is hosting the Pan American Games — a major multi-sport event held every four years — and the stakes are high, as the games play out amid a nearly 5-year-old drug war that keeps setting new thresholds for shocking violence.

The wonder of it all still makes Maureen O'Toole put her hand to her mouth in amazement. O'Toole, 39-year-old water polo player, gets recognized in public. She was stopped by strangers at South Coast Plaza. "Aren't you Maureen O'Toole?" she was asked. "We saw you in the Olympics. Water polo is cool." That's what becoming an Olympic sport can do. It can make your sport cool. Six weeks after the U.S.

Gustavo Kuerten, on the edge of defeat in a second-set tiebreaker, rallied to defeat Jiri Novak, 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5, Saturday to reach the final of the Mercedes Cup tennis tournament in Stuttgart, Germany. The top-seeded Brazilian will play Guillermo Canas today in the title match of the $800,000 clay-court tournament. The 10th-seeded Argentine beat teenage qualifier Marc Lopez of Spain, 6-2, 6-2.

With every success at the Holiday Cup tournament, the U.S. women's water polo team's stock rises. On Saturday it was a balanced 11-9 victory over defending world champion the Netherlands at the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center that delighted the crowd of about 1,500. It set up an all-North American final at 7 tonight against Canada, another team that didn't figure to make this much noise when qualifying for the Sydney Olympics began more than a year ago.