Varsity Girls Water Polo lost to Santa Clara High School 9-3 on Tuesday, Sept. 24. SCHS gained an early lead, scoring four points in the first quarter of the game. Although there were many close attempts to score a goal, MVHS was unable to overcome their rough start.
After a brief time out to discuss the team’s strategy, in the second quarter of the game, junior and point player Evan Greene scored the first goal for MVHS after her team was awarded a five-meter, bringing the score 7-1 by halftime. In the third quarter, MVHS improved their defense and found more opportunities to score, with Senior and co-captain Sonika Wagner scoring two additional goals.
However, SCHS maintained their early lead, ending the quarter at 8-3. In the final quarter, MVHS made successful attempts to stop SCHS’s attacks, only allowing them to score one final point.
Junior, goalie and co-captain Ria Sethi believes as the game advanced the team did a better job at defense, but believes that efficient communication will be essential for the team to work on in the next game.
“I think one of the ways to fix that is really communicating, so we are trying to work on that right now as a team,” Sethi said. “We’re playing between team members and making sure everyone understands where they are and who they are on defense.”
Greene and junior Miya Sakurai agree with Sethi, and Sakurai notes how there was often miscommunication between guarding players, leaving SCHS players open and allowing them to score many points.
“We went into this game very strong,” Greene said. “We were like, ‘Wow, we’re gonna win,” and then in the first quarter they scored five times on us, and I think that killed our confidence.”
Despite the disappointments, the team is determined to use this opportunity to be resilient and apply what they have learned during this game to come back as a stronger team in their future matches.
“At the end, we kind of got our team together with good defense and offense,” Sethi said. “Honestly, it was a really good area to see what we can learn from, and I think we did improve at the end. So that’s the real win.”
