Senior Tiernan Braun has been a driving and diving force in his four years on Los Altos High School’s water polo team. Leading the varsity boys squad in defense, Tiernan helped propel the Eagles to a Division I CCS win and CIF finals for the first time in school history.
And next fall, Tiernan will be shooting even higher — toward Pitzer College’s Division III water polo team.
“He plays with intensity and energy and strength,” varsity water polo head coach Seth Tasman said. “In my 15 years of coaching, Tiernan is by far the strongest athlete that I’ve coached.”
Tiernan’s journey to college water polo began with swimming in first grade, followed by starting to play water polo in seventh grade for NorCal Aquatics, his current club water polo team. Freshman year, Tiernan joined LAHS’s varsity team. All those years, he said water polo has been a central part of his life.
“Being in the water helped me feel calm and more awake,” Tiernan said. “And the friends I met on the team I’ve had for all of high school.”
He was recognized by the school as an All-League Player in 2024 and a Defensive Player of the Year in 2025.
According to Tasman and teammate senior Benji Barkovich, Tiernan’s role as center defender is crucial to team accomplishment, such as winning CCS Division I and finishing as the CIF NorCal runner-up in 2024, and reaching CCS Open Division quarterfinals in 2025.
“This high school season, he was the backbone of our defense, usually guarding the opposing team’s best player,” Tasman said. “In my opinion, he was the best 2-meter defender in all of CCS this last season.”
Tiernan’s contributions extended beyond defense — he said he scored more than 30 goals last fall.
“It makes it easier on the rest of us offensively and defensively when we don’t have to worry about the opposing team’s best player getting in the way because Tiernan is there,” Benji said.
Tiernan’s club team won 16th in the National Championship the summer after his sophomore year — he recalls playing every minute of every game that season, and prides himself on his defense skills.
“Even if I wasn’t the highest scorer, I knew I could always be the best defender in the pool,” Tiernan said.
Tiernan’s choice of college also reflects his dedication to building a collaborative, understanding, and family-like team community.
“At Los Altos, we don’t have a selfish player, we don’t argue with each other, and if we make a mistake, no one lashes out,” Tiernan said. “In other teams, there’s always a star player, an ego, but for us, it’s more of a family.”
According to Tiernan, amongst the schools he visited, he selected Pitzer College because of its academic rigor, its academic-athletic balance, and the team’s lively dynamic.
“I visited other teams and a lot of the time they didn’t feel like family,” Tiernan said. “But when I met the Pitzer team, I felt like they had something special. They enjoyed being with each other.”
Tiernan also attributes the team’s ambition to its uniqueness.
“I could tell that even though it was DIII, the coach wanted to be competitive with DI schools,” Tiernan said. “I could see the fire he had and that really pumped me up.”
To Tiernan, the Pitzer team’s mindset and view of the sport strongly aligned with his own.
“Winning is the most fun thing to do in a sport, but not the most important thing,” Tiernan said. “The most important thing is being able to put your whole body out there, your whole self into the sport.”
