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The Stanford men's water polo squad landed four players on the All-Mountain Pacific Sports Federation team, with freshman driver Bret Bonanni earning the MPSF Newcomer of the Year award, the conference announced Tuesday.

Bonanni and sophomore utility Alex Bowen also were named to the All-MPSF First Team, while redshirt junior two-meter Forrest Watkins and freshman driver BJ Churnside each earned All-MPSF honorable mention.

The Cardinal was just one of two teams, along with regular-season champion USC, to have multiple selections to the conference's first team.

In addition to Bonanni's newcomer of the year honor, Pacific's Balazs Erdelyi was named MPSF Player of the Year while Long Beach State's Gavin Arroyo was named MPSF Coach of the Year.

Stanford finished the 2012 campaign with a 16-7 overall record and a 5-3 mark in MPSF play. The Cardinal, which entered last weekend as the third-ranked team in the country, finished fourth at the MPSF Championship over the holiday weekend, falling in consecutive one-goal games to No. 1 USC on Saturday and No. 2 UCLA on Sunday.

Bonanni's newcomer honor makes him the fourth Cardinal player to claim the award, following Bowen (2011), Drac Wigo (2006) and Will Hindle-Katel (2005). The Huntington Beach native led Stanford with 73 goals in 2012, the highest output for a Cardinal player since Tony Azevedo netted 80 goals in 2004. Bonanni posted 12 hat tricks over 23 games, including a conference record-matching nine goals Oct. 21 against Air Force, and eight against UC Irvine on Oct. 27. He twice earned MPSF KAP 7 Player of the Week honors in 2012, on Oct. 15 and 27.

Bowen followed up his 2011 season, in which he earned the conference top newcomer honor, with his second straight selection to the All-MPSF First Team. In 2012 Bowen finished second on the team with 64 goals, including a team-high 11 at the MPSF Championships. He also posted 12 hat tricks this season, highlighted by six goals in each of Stanford's two wins over Long Beach State, the latter a 14-13 sudden-death win in which Bowen scored the game-winner.

Tuesday's announcement marked the second straight All-MPSF honor for Watkins, a two-meter from Seal Beach who was named to the first team in 2011. This season, Watkins helped anchor a Cardinal defense that ranked fourth in the MPSF with 7.78 goals allowed per game. On the offensive end, Watkins tied for fourth in the team rankings with 22 goals, including five multi-goal games, among those a five-goal performance against Pepperdine at the SoCal Tournament on Sept. 30.

Joining Watkins on the honorable mention list was Churnside, the second of Stanford's two active freshmen in 2012 with Bonanni. Churnside ended the year third on the team with 31 goals, finishing with a flourish as he scored 22 of his goals over the team's final seven games. That stretch included 10 goals, including two four-goal efforts, at the MPSF Championship last weekend.

— Stanford Sports Information

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