Varsity Boys Water Polo beat Saratoga High School 12-9 on Thursday, Sept. 12. The Matadors were able to consistently keep up their lead due to consistent offense and effective teamwork, especially during the first three quarters. The game closed out with senior Owen Pow scoring a goal in the last quarter, allowing the team to win its first home game of the season.
Going into the game, the Matadors knew they had an advantage due to victories against SHS in previous seasons. However, despite their advantage, senior and flat Ani Cherukuri feels the team could have still performed better, as they let their defense slip during the latter half of the game and allowed SHS to score open shots.
Center player and junior Suhan Hajela echoes Cherukuri’s sentiment, noting that since this was one of the earlier games in the season, the team did not have adequate experience playing with one another.
“We’re all good players, we just don’t know how to work together as a team yet,” Hajela said. “We haven’t played together in such a long time and I know we can do a lot better. I think this game, we just started shooting the ball more and we were just a lot more confident. We communicated more, and used a lot of different plays which worked.”
Hajela says the team brought strong qualities to this game, such as communication, defense and ball movement. Both Hajela and Cherukuri felt that their time-outs, led by Head Coach Lauren Tang, were very helpful in revising their strategies and keeping their heads in the game.
“During our time-outs, I’m mainly talking about focusing on where the ball is,” Tang said. “Things like knowing what to do with the ball before you get it and our gameplay on going into the next possession. I talk about what I want them to do with movement and how I want them to set up defensively. I’m just trying to make sure that we’re all on the same page so we can stand strong against their defense.”
Tang notes that the Matadors will be playing against SHS in the future, so they plan on analyzing film to make adjustments to their plays and look out for the strategies that SHS uses. Cherukuri looks forward to this, as he is hopeful for the rest of the season and the team’s improvement.
“This is really early in the season, and we haven’t had much game experience as a full team yet,” Cherukuri said. “So for the rest of the season, I think we’ll continue to get better, and next time we play them I think we can make this a much better game.”
