With all of its hard work throughout the season finally paying off, the girls water polo team capped off this season with their first CCS appearance since 2011. After a strong back half of the season and SCVAL performance, the Lady Eagles qualified for CCS. They were, however, stopped by Carlmont in the first round of CCS on Wednesday, November 13, at Palo Alto High School.
Despite working hard all season, the girls lacked the concentration that they possessed during the league championship games. The game would end in a one point loss, with Los Altos losing 6-7. With this final loss, the girls water polo is now officially over, rounding off a solid end of the season.
SCVALs saw the girls play in three games: against Palo Alto, Gunn and Saratoga in three consecutive days. Los Altos defeated Palo Alto, claiming an 8-4 victory over the Vikings. Though the Lady Eagles fell to Gunn (the number one team at SCVALs) 2-13 and to Saratoga 3-4, they came out of SCVALs seeded fourth and qualified for CCS.
These late season successes represent the culmination of a season’s worth of work—this progressive increase in performance has only been possible because of the work put into improving a number of gameplay aspects, particularly communication and scrimmaging.
“I think we have gotten a lot better at communication in the water and that has greatly helped us,” co-captain senior Jenna Gavenman said.
Countless mornings and afternoons have been spent practicing drills and scrimmaging to hone skills.
“We do a lot of swimming and drills during practice,” sophomore Julia Suh said. “We also scrimmage a lot to improve our communication and ball handling while under pressure.”
These skills have been developed not only to ensure that the second half of the season is as fruitful as possible, but also to train the younger athletes on the team. Recently, at the last home game of the season on October 31 against Palo Alto High School, the team’s five seniors were recognized at senior night. Although their individual contributions to the team were indispensable, the team is already preparing for next year when the seniors will be gone.
“We have a ton of girls and will train very hard this offseason to prepare for next year where we look to push for a deeper run into CCS,” head coach Seth Tasman said.
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