The varsity girls water polo team faced Mountain View High School on Oct. 8 at home. Despite strong defense, however, the Lady Mats could not hold off the Spartans’ aggressive offense.
The Lady Mats started off strong with a goal by senior co-captain Kristin Vrionis during the first quarter. However, this was the last point that the girls scored. Despite numerous attempts at the Spartans’ goal, the girls threw weak shots, shooting the ball to the center of the goal instead off to the sides, which made it easy for the Spartan goalie to block the shots. Moreover, the girls threw multiple missed passes, giving them an opportunity to score. The Spartans used their speed and aggression to stop the Lady Mats from succeeding.
“They definitely caught on to how we work as a team,” said co-captain grade Merin Palmer said. “So like the boy’s JV coach, he told us to stop having tunnel vision, only focusing on one aspect and instead [making] sure that we’re watching the whole game and everyone around us as well.”
Even so, the girls were proud of the fact that they used the skills that they had been working on, including kickbacks and turning, during the game. In particular, they utilized the tackle drill that they had been practicing that week.
“We learned the drill called the tackle drill, and it kind of worked in the first half,” junior Madeline Lee said. Tackle drill is when a player has the ball while standing at the two or four meter line, and another player drives on the opposite side of the ball.
Some players were especially significant to the effort. Despite replacing junior Iraa Guleria, who is the usual goalie, sophomore Hanna Severietti blocked multiple shots from the Spartans. Junior Kylie Constant stole the ball from a Spartan near the Lady Mats’ goal during the third quarter, preventing the Spartans from scoring a point; the Spartans only scored one point during the third quarter, as opposed to three points during the second and fourth quarter.
Overall, the girls were satisfied with the effort.
“Mountain View [High School] beat Harker, which we lost to by one point [in a previous match against them], by 14 [points when Mountain View played Harker],and we lost by not as much,” junior Sonia Lee said. “So it was a good game.”