The Water Polo Scandal That Rocked LA’s Most Elite Private School

In 2024 top water polo player Lucca van der Woude was arrested at Los Angeles’s Harvard-Westlake School—allegedly under suspicion of sexual assault. The criminal case against the player was closed, and the elite academy maintains it did nothing wrong. But a new civil suit accuses the school of risking the safety of two students of color—while allegedly protecting the white teammate who made their lives unbearable.