SAN DIEGO - San Diego State enters this week’s play ranked No. 17 in the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) national poll and hosts No. 16 UC San Diego on Thursday at 4 p.m., at Aztec Aquaplex. The game marks the 24th playing of the Harper Cup, a game that honors Denny Harper, who played at SDSU and coached at UC San Diego.
Up Next - Harper Cup
No. 17 San Diego State (16-9) vs. No. 16 UC San Diego (10-11)
Thursday, April 2 | 4 p.m. PT | Aztec Aquaplex | San Diego, Calif.
Link to live stats and streaming video will be available through the team’s schedule page at www.goaztecs.com
Aztecs Notes
SDSU leads the Harper Cup 13-10. SDSU won 13 of the first 14 Harper Cups (2002-15) but has dropped the last nine. In Harper Cup games played at the Aquaplex, SDSU leads 7-4.
The Aztecs are ranked No. 17 in the CWPA poll for the second week in a row, after spending time at No. 13 two weeks ago and the seven weeks prior to that at No. 19. SDSU has been ranked in the top 25 in each of the organization’s 10 weekly and preseason polls.
San Diego State enters the week seven games above .500 with a 16-9 mark. It is the most games above .500 that team has been since it finished the 2014 campaign, 23-12, nine games clear of .500. This year will mark the fifth time since 2014 that the team has finished with a winning record, with two of those five years coming in the last three campaigns.
SDSU completed its 2026 Golden Coast Conference (GCC) slate on March 22 in a 14-12 defeat at Fresno State. The Aztecs have a 4-2 record in league play and are the 3-seed in next week’s GCC Tournament which is slated to be conducted April 10-12 in Fresno, Calif.
As the 3-seed in the GCC Tournament, San Diego State will play the 6-seed, Azusa Pacific, at noon PT on Friday, April 10. If the team wins that contest, it will next play in a semifinal game against 2-seed Fresno State the next day at noon.
Mimi Stoupas (Jr., CTR, Melbourne, Australia) was named the GCC Player of the Week for the week ending on March 15. She is one of two players in the league to win the award twice this season, and in leading the Aztecs to a 3-1 record at the Aztec Invitational, she scored 10 goals, drew 10 exclusions, had five steals and a block. It’s her second player of the week honor this year and the third of her career.
At the 2026 Aztec Invitational (March 13-15), San Diego State went 3-1 and improved its record in the event to 50-21 and emerged from it with a .500-plus record for the 16th time in its 18 iterations.
With its 19-6 win against Azusa Pacific on March 5, the Aztecs secured an unprecedented 13th straight GCC campaign with a winning league record. No other program, among the original six GCC programs (Santa Clara, Azusa Pacific, Loyola Marymount, Pacific, Cal Baptist and San Diego State) can make that claim.
Senior attacker Claudia Valdes (Sr., ATT, Madrid, Spain) was named Golden Coast Conference (GCC) Player of the Week on February 19. She posted game highs in goals (4), assists (5), points (9) and steals (2). She completed a hat trick, her sixth of the season, with 4:13 to play in the first half, totaled four total goals for the second straight game and for third time in 14 contests this year. The five assists were her second most in a game this season and nine points match her career high. It is Valdes’ second GCC Player of the Week honor in her college career and the second for an Aztec.
Junior two-meter Mimi Stoupas was named the initial 2026 Golden Coast Conference (GCC) Player of the Week. At the season opening Titan Invitational, Stoupas scored 19 goals, drew 12 exclusions, had nine steals and shot a team-leading 67.9 percent (19-of-28) with two blocks and an assist. It is Stoupas’ third GCC Player of the Week honor in her college career.
Mimi Stoupas (Jr., CTR, Melbourne, Australia) and Ioanna Petiki (Fr., ATT, Stuttgart, Germany), earned the ultimate honor in representing their country on an international stage. The pair competed at the FISA World University Games in Duisburg, Germany over the summer. Petiki’s German squad won the gold medal as she scored a pair of power play goals to go along with three steals and a block across six games. Stoupas scored nine times, tied for third most on the team, and her four tallies from in front of the goal led the team, which finished in sixth place.
With her first of four goals against UC Santa Barbara (2-7-26), Sydney Gish (Sr., ATT, Clovis, Calif.) passed the 100-goal milestone and enters the week’s competition with 136 career tallies.
With her first save against No. 6 Arizona State (2-8-26), Tiaare Ahovelo (Sr., GK, Auckland, New Zealand) became the seventh player in the 32 seasons of Aztecs water polo to reach the 500-save plateau. She enters the week with 534 for her career, No. 6 on the program’s all-time saves list and is 10 away from equaling No. 5 Ashley Zabel’s (2001-04) and her 544 career saves.
Claudia Valdes (Sr., ATT, Madrid, Spain) enters the week with 80 career assists good for a tie at No. 3 on the program’s career list and is six from tying Elana Cervantes (2004-7) for No. 2 in program history. In addition, Valdes passed the 200-goal milestone vs. Biola (1-17-26), sits in fifth place on the San Diego State career goals list with 238 and is four from No. 4 Caroline Israels’ (2014-17) career 242 tallies.
Mimi Stoupas (Jr., CTR, Melbourne, Australia) has drawn 175 exclusions in her Aztec career and sits at No. 9 on the program’s career list. She enters the week four from equaling Larisa Baltgalvis (1997-00) at No. 8, who drew 179 exclusions wearing the Scarlet and Black.
Dana Ochsner is in her fourth season leading San Diego State after serving as the interim head coach for the 2023 campaign. She has a 60-58 record entering the week’s game.
Since the program’s inception prior to the 1995 season, San Diego State has had just three head coaches: Deena Schmidt (1995-98), Carin Crawford (1999-2022) and Dana Ochsner (2023-present). All three coaches have a winning record: Deena Schmidt (91-42), Carin Crawford (475-329) and Dana Ochsner (60-58).
In its now 32nd season of competition, San Diego State has an overall record of 623-426 (.594), including a 133-108 (.555) mark in league contests. In 17 of the previous 31 seasons, the program finished ranked in the top 10 nationally, has only finished outside of the top 20 four times and has never finished a season ranked outside the top 25.
Since it joined the Golden Coast Conference (GCC) for the 2014 season, San Diego State has posted a 71-18 (.798) mark in league contests. Among the six original members of the league - Santa Clara, Azusa Pacific, Loyola Marymount, Pacific, Cal Baptist and San Diego State - that are still members, SDSU is one of three programs with a winning league record entering this year [also: Pacific - 60-17 (.779) & Loyola Marymount - 58-18 (.763)] and SDSU is the only one of the original six to not have suffered a league season with a losing record.
San Diego State was picked to finish in fourth place in the GCC coaches’ preseason poll. The Aztecs locked down the 3-seed in the upcoming GCC Championship.