This year, the boys water polo team is setting its eyes on first place in the CCS finals. Although Los Altos hasn’t won the championship in recent years, the team has placed second in CCS finals two years in a row.
“Last year we played against Sacred Heart and lost to Sacred Heart,” Head Coach Johnny Bega said. “The year before [that] we played Sacred Heart, and lost to Sacred Heart.”
Right from the start, the team is working with the goal of making it to the finals. However, there are challenges. Sacred Heart won the CCS championship the last seven years; Bega knows the team is not going to be easy to beat. Last year, Los Altos lost in the finals by 10 goals. However, senior Ryan Seltzer believes that the team has a better chance this year.
“I don’t want to jinx it,” Ryan said. “We’re not going to win easily and it’s going to be tough to even stay with them, but I think it’s safe to say that if we get there we can probably do better than we did last year.”
However, the team has lost senior talent, including Ian McColl, who was the top scorer, and Cameron Putnam and Afsheen Khosraviani, who were senior goalies last year. Many of this year’s players only joined varsity this season.
“There’s about five seniors and then the rest are all juniors, so those guys are all brand new,” Bega said.
Because the team lost old players and is working with many new ones, Ryan believes the team is still developing the cohesion they would like to have. The team lost narrowly to Gunn High School, 10-9 on September 19.
“Our defense is developing [but] we need to work on it more,” junior Bryan Kim said.
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