Boys water polo faced off against its rival, Henry M. Gunn High School, on Sept. 24. It was a difficult game, and the Vikings lost 14-5 to Gunn.
The team lost by a wide margin, but Gunn is one of the stronger teams in the league, and the team was expecting a difficult game.
“I’m not actually that upset about it because we were missing two of our starters,” junior Alex Beaudry said. “Gunn is probably our strongest competition because they have the strongest team and they’ve [beaten] every team they’ve played so far.”
The team also played in the North Coast Section (NCS) and Central Coast Section (CCS) tournament, along with 31 other teams at Acalanes High School.
In the first game of the tournament, the Vikings struggled against Sacred Heart Preparatory High School, losing 14-2. In the next game, the team faced off against Carmel High School another time, losing 11-8.
The team’s tournament record only went downhill from there. The team then lost its third and fourth matches of the tournament to Redwood High School and Monta Vista High School. The boys had a difficult time, in part due to the absence of many of their starting players, sophomore Jack Anderson and seniors Winston Rosati, Justyn Cheung and Kevin Bowers.
“I’d say that the biggest thing we need to work on is team building, and then the second biggest thing would be pressure passing, so offense,” Beaudry said. “I think we are really going to start picking it up after we get our starters back and I think we can go far”.
The team had a rematch against Monta Vista on Sept. 29, and the team lost again, but this time it was a closer game, with the final score being 9-8. Again, Anderson and Bowers were not able to play, which hurt the team.
The team knows that it must improve over the remainder of the season if it wants to win the league title.
“We know that we have a lot of work to do,” Bowers said. “We need to work on our defense for the most part, since our losses have all been high scoring games.”
However, even with some tough losses, the boys are rallying and getting excited for their next game on Oct. 13 against Mountain View High school. This game will be one of only three home games for the boys this year.
