Top Water Polo Athlete Embroiled In Abuse Scandal Says He Switched To Newport Harbor Due To Ban

NEWPORT BEACH, CA — An elite water polo player once considered one of American water polo's top Olympic prospects recently admitted in court that he enrolled at an Orange County campus after being banned from his previous school by district officials, The Orange County Register reported.

Lucca Van Der Woude recently admitted under oath that he transferred to Newport Harbor High School from Harvard-Westlake after the private school banned him from campus due to his arrest in connection with allegations that he had sexually assaulted members of his water polo team, the paper reported.

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The acknowledgment, according to the report, would indicate that Van Der Woude was ineligible to play for Newport Harbor under California Interscholastic Federation rules. However, when the CIF Southern Section approved his transfer to the campus in 2024, he was allowed to compete for the school.

The admission follows a bombshell lawsuit in which former Harvard-Westlake School student Aidan Romain claimed he endured racist and sexual abuse at the hands of Van Der Woude and other water polo teammates, Vanity Fair reported.

Van Der Woude has maintained he is innocent of harassment.

"The complaint walks through a myriad of allegations of racial abuse ranging from Aidan being called the N-word to being literally whipped with exercise bands in the weight room supposedly re-enacting slavery [by teammates]," attorney Daniel Watkins, who represents Romain, told KTLA in March.

Romain also said that while he was a student at Harvard-Westlake between August 2022 and February 2024, he was sexually assaulted, harassed and humiliated by Van Der Woude and other water polo teammates in the weight room and beneath the surface of the pool — sometimes in the presence of Harvard-Westlake employees, according to The Independent.

The lawsuit names Harvard-Westlake, school President Richard B. Commons, water polo coach Jack Grover and Van Der Woude, according to the report.

While the civil case is pending, in a 2024 deposition in Los Angeles County Juvenile Division Court, Van Der Woude admitted to sexual penetration with a foreign object against a minor, The Orange County Register reported. Van Der Woude's legal team is seeking to have the newspaper's reporting stricken from the civil lawsuit, The California Post reported. Patch is unable to verify the details of sealed juvenile court records.

Van Der Woude's recent admission will likely put pressure on the California Interscholastic Federation to investigate the circumstances surrounding his transfer to Newport Harbor. He led his team to victory by clinching the game-winning goal and scoring a CIF title in 2024, the Daily Pilot reported.

"There is nothing complicated about this. Lucca Van Der Woude was punished after being arrested for sexual assault against minors," Watkins, the attorney, told The OC Register. "Lucca Van Der Woude was barred from Harvard-Westlake and the water polo team. He transferred because he could not return. Those are facts. The only complexity comes from the effort to explain how those facts somehow disappeared when it came time to tell CIF the truth."