Varsity Girls Water Polo lost 5-3 against Cupertino High School on Tuesday, Sept. 5 in its first game of the season. Both teams started off strong in the first quarter, ending it with a tie of 2-2. However, as the game progressed, CHS managed to score three goals in the last three quarters, amassing a total of five points, while MVHS only scored one goal in the last quarter. Junior and point 2D Sophie Minogue says that the team has been consistently training for the season but was still not confident in their abilities.
“We’re still learning and we have a lot of newer players on the varsity team,” Minogue said. “I was expecting a loss, but at the same time, I was expecting it to be a good experience. We were setting up correctly, and we were making our way down the pool, so we were happy with how well we were doing even though we weren’t winning.”
Minogue states that the team has room for improvement in areas such as communication. She believes an improvement in communication could have allowed the team to score more goals against CHS.
“Some of the players were a little intense for us,” Minogue said. “Some of us should have called for switches or asked for help from other people because some of [the CHS players] were really fast, and we couldn’t keep up with them. If we could have communicated better to get across the pool, I think we could have avoided some of the shots that were taken on us.”
Senior and captain Darya Pereverzeva reflects on past years’ achievements and says the team is working on improving with new teammates. However, she believes the team did well and attributes the goals they scored to the team’s hard work during preseason training.
“Last year we got pretty much annihilated at this game and we lost a lot of seniors so I did not expect to do as good as we did [today],” Pereverzeva said. “Because of our great team bonding and [the] amount of work everyone put in during the preseason, I think we did a lot better than I expected. I’m very proud of the team.”
