LA JOLLA – Both Dexter Black and Tor Martin, core starters on La Jolla High School’s CIF Open Division champion water polo team, have older brothers who starred in the program and failed to win the gold ring – the open title.
“My older brother Soren’s group thought they had the best team, and they didn’t win the section title,” Tor recalls. “He said to me, ‘Good luck,’ but he didn’t think we would win this year.”
The centre, who plays in both attack and defense from the post just in front of the goal, said “it was good to show him” that coach Tom Atwell’s 2025 group could climb the mountain.
The current edition of the Vikings defeated Cathedral Catholic, the top-seeded team entering the playoffs, 13-12, in an exciting upset on Nov. 15 that led to students joining the players in the pool after the buzzer sounded.
“I knew it was coming,” said Dexter, a 6-foot-4, scorer extraordinaire and fellow All-CIF First Teamer at Tor. “After I made the penalty shot (with 29 seconds left), I saw guys taking off their shirts and handing their cell phones to other people. I knew they were ready.”
It was Atwell’s — the coach taught AP European history at the coastal school for 25 years — and La Jolla’s first Open Division championship. La Jolla won a Division 1 title in 2015, but that pales in comparison to the open title over giants and rivals the Dons, and before that Crosstown Bishop’s. The Vikings were always going to be among the elite three in the playoffs, but not this time.
“Confidence and development,” Dexter, La Jolla’s leading scorer, a lefty, sums up the difference between last year’s team and this one. Tor – named after the god of thunder, Thor – agrees.
The team had many of the same players, but one year older, one year more mature and stronger. But the mentality was also different. “We had a number of shortcomings that we needed to address in 2024,” Dexter continued. Before the fans’ eyes, defenseman Nate Thomson, a senior, and Henry Glenister, another left-handed scorer alongside Dexter, developed into roles of more responsibility.
“Nate, in our house we call him the dog,” says Dexter, four years younger than his brother Kiefer, who now plays at the Naval Academy. “He does all the dirty work but gets no credit” – winning the sprint, defending, being a top passer.
Glenister thrives on the 4-5 side – the imaginary rectangular “box” in water polo has the 1-2 side on the far left, the 4-5 side on the far right and 3-6 in the middle – giving Dexter the Vikings’ second prolific scorer.
Goaltender George Gayner, also a senior, was no slouch. He made numerous key saves in the quarterfinals against Poway and the semifinals against Bishop’s, and was again an impregnable bulwark against Cathedral in the final.
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