This year’s new girls varsity water polo head coach Katie Buzzetta has the team training harder than ever to advance further in the CCS championships than last year, where the team was defeated in the first round.

“I’m hoping to…improve what we did last year,” Buzzetta said. “I think we [have] potential to take it all the way to the end.”

Throughout the beginning of their season, the girls team has been working mostly on their speed in the water and their ability to move the ball around the pool effectively.

“For the first few weeks, we have really tried to focus on swimming, conditioning and skill work,” team captain junior Christina Pao said. “Coming off of last year, something we really wanted to do was build a strong foundation to go into games.

A lot of our girls have played together before either in club or in high school season so we really tried focusing on getting stronger and faster rather than going straight into plays and scrimmages.”

On the defensive side, the team bases its core strategy on preventing other teams from scoring and on using their extensive swimming conditioning to out-swim other teams on the counterattack.

“[We have been] focusing on defense to make sure that we are able to stop teams and make sure that they don’t get up on us too big,” Buzzetta said.

With more of their league games coming up soon, the girls’ first game this season was against Gunn High School on September 16.

Although the girls lost with a final score of 4-3, they rebounded in their next game and beat Homestead 9-3. The girls were losing 2-1 in the first quarter of their game against Homestead, but they managed to pull back the lead during the third quarter and stay ahead. However, the team suffered another loss to Los Gatos last week on Tuesday. After their loss against Saratoga on September 25, their league record stands at 1-3.