The girls varsity water polo team played in their first non-SCVAL tournament on September 13-14 at Sacred Heart Preparatory in Menlo Atherton. The tournament was hosted by Saint Francis Mountain View and was held at two different locations, Saint Francis High School and Sacred Heart. The team played a total of four games, which happened to all be at Sacred Heart.
The first game was against Menlo Atherton; the Eagles were up by one goal until the last quarter when Menlo pulled ahead and won. After that close loss, the team was matched against Palo Alto High School (PALY) and won a solid 4-2, a huge improvement from last year when PALY won all the matches against Los Altos.
The third game was against Davis, where the girls played a six on five play to lose 1-11; sophomore Christina Pao scored the only goal. In the final game against Saint Francis Sacramento, the Eagles sustained a 5-12 loss, just barely missing the last shot from half court.
Their first league meet was at Gunn on September 19, and the Eagles suffered a tough loss of 2-14.
“Gunn feeds from Stanford club and Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics and…everything that we don’t have they have,” varsity co-captain senior Jenna Gavenman said. “They’re a very strong team.”
Despite the setback, the team is shooting for better luck this year at CCS, as they lost the chance to qualify by one place last year. Before that, a top or second place finish at leagues against Gunn is on the horizon.
“The offense-based strategy that the girls have worked on since summer has worked out great,” Head Coach Seth Tasman said. “We still need a little more fine tuning, but we are playing great team water polo…We want to get all of our girls involved in our offense, not just rely on one or two girls to score for our team.”
The girls play at Saratoga today, October 1, at 6:45 p.m.
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