DAILY PILOT HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETE OF THE WEEK

Newport Harbor High senior Jimmy Burger wants to be an engineer. It’s understandable, considering he has always liked to build things.

“I loved playing with Legos and building my own things,” Burger said. “When I was younger, that was pretty much all I would do.”

But near the start of the Sailors nonleague boys’ water polo opener on Saturday, it looked like Newport Harbor was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

The Sailors were down, 1-0, early in the second quarter against Foothill. As possession after possession came up empty, tension was mounting in the game between two top-10 teams in the CIF Southern Section Division I coaches’ poll.

Who would be the one to step up in the Newport season opener in front of a packed house?

It was the future engineer who came off the bench to engineer a comeback, and Burger himself was probably the least surprised of anyone at the game. He scored a long goal from seven meters, then added two more midway through the second half.

Then, Burger scored the game-winning goal, his fourth, with 2:02 left in the game. The last goal capped what was a big 9-8 win for the Sailors.

In his first meaningful varsity experience, Burger seemed to come out of nowhere. But look closer.

“I was prepared,” said Burger, the Daily Pilot Athlete of the Week. “We’d been working on almost everything that could happen in games. I was putting it away in practice, so I figured I was ready for the game. A lot of people said, ‘Why couldn’t you have been doing that earlier?’ and stuff. But I was just pumped for that game.”

And why wouldn’t the senior be pumped? It was a long time coming for the kid who mostly spent last year on the junior varsity. But Burger knew that in his senior year, it could be his time to shine.

So he said he worked harder than ever this summer. When his opportunity came, he wanted to be sure he’d make the most of it.

“He was given an opportunity and he maximized it,” Sailors Coach Jason Lynch said. “That’s one of the things we try to teach. You’ve got to be ready when your opportunity comes, because you might not get another one.”

Burger wasn’t about to let the opportunity go by. He has waited a long time for it after starting to play water polo in the seventh grade.

Back then, Burger knew he wanted to play a sport. But, he said, he wasn’t the best runner, which seemed to eliminate a lot of his choices.

“I gave up on soccer or baseball or any of those kind of sports,” Burger said. “I was deciding between football or water polo, and also playing volleyball a little bit. I tried all three, and it seemed like I was better at water polo. It just clicked.”

This summer, he helped Newport to a ninth-place finish at the boys’ 18s Junior Olympics in San Jose. He also went with the team on a two-week trip to Hungary, where it finished second in a four-team mini tournament with two Hungarian teams and a squad from South Africa.

Burger said the experience was an eye-opener, kind of like his performance against Foothill.

“They take the game to heart; it’s their passion,” he said of the Hungarians. “We learned a lot from how they played. They’re more physical, but not dirty physical. They press harder and hold you more. The first few days, they were able to push us around pretty easily. After three or four days of it, we started picking it up and getting better at keeping our position, not getting pushed away. Then we started to play more physical ourselves.”

Burger, whose younger sister Krissy is a sophomore at Harbor and plays goalie, really just loves aquatics. He works summers as a lifeguard in Newport Beach, and he also dabbles in surfing and skateboarding.

Is he a great surfer?

“I’m all right,” Burger said. “I’m not good, but I’m good enough to catch the waves and ride them. I can’t really do any tricks or anything.”

But if he keeps performing tricks for the Sailors this year, that will suit Lynch just fine.

“I think once he got the first [goal] then he got a lot more confidence, for sure,” Lynch said. “I give him a lot of credit. That was a tight game and he went for it.”