Oxy Men’s Water Polo Makes Waves in the Pool

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Author: Alex Graves

Over the past two weekends, while many students have gone out late to take part in the usual weekend shenanigans, the Occidental Men’s water polo team has been battling for glory at regional tournaments. The team opened up their season at the Inland Empire Classic tournament at the University of Redlands two weekends ago, where they struggled against stiff competition, including University of the Pacific (UOP), a Division I team.

Although they walked away from the tournament without a victory, Andrew Valdes (senior) saw a silver lining. Playing against a Division I school gave the team an opportunity to assess its strengths and weaknesses.

“They [UOP] were beatable,” Valdes said.

Perhaps that test paid dividends this past weekend at the Cal Lutheran University tournament, where the team won three out of its four games. On Saturday, Sept. 20, the team won a close game against Fresno Pacific, 9-8. In their other Saturday match, however, they lost an intense game against conference rival Cal Lutheran 11-9. When asked what went wrong against their rival, Valdes responded that Oxy simply came out flat.

“We just didn’t play four quarters of our game,” he said.

Despite the disappointing loss, the men came back Sunday with a better focus. With this, they won against Ventura College in an exciting 14-13 overtime game, and proceeded to complete the tournament by beating conference foe La Verne 10-6. Valdes led the team to a strong end over the weekend, finishing with 10 goals in the four games played.

This past weekend, the men travelled up to Northern California to compete in the Slugfest tournament at UC Santa Cruz. The tournament featured a highly competitive field of teams, including Division I teams Air Force, UC Davis and Santa Clara University-as well as UC Santa Cruz, a strong Division III team. To prepare for these games, the team focused during practice this week on playing strong for four quarters. They emphasized the need to play fundamentally sound polo, as well as the need to play with poise and consistency.

“If we can do that, and execute what we want to offensively, I think we’ll have a solid weekend,” Valdes said.

The weekend got off to a tough start on Saturday, Sept. 27, as the team fell to Air Force 13-7. Despite the week of preparation, Oxy struggled against a more physical, bigger team. Abiel Garcia (senior) noted that it was difficult during the first game to adjust to the Northern California game, which he said is “a lot more physical than we’re used to.”

The more physical Northern California game caught the team by surprise.

“We had a tough time adapting to their defense,” Garcia added. Despite making some adjustments in their second game of the day against Santa Clara University, the men again fell, 20-11.

The men lost their opening match on Sunday against Division I UC Davis, 14-4. However, for many on the team, the best part of the tournament came in the game against UC Santa Cruz. In front of UCSC’s fanatical home crowd of rowdy students, the men fell behind early. However they quickly battled back, pulling away and eventually winning 16-7.

“We wanted to beat those hippies so badly,” Garcia said, referring to the hyper liberal reputation of the student body at UC Santa Cruz. “Beating them in front of their home crowd was amazing. I was so happy.”

Despite struggling in tournaments the past two weekends, the team believes that these matches against Division I schools will only make them better for SCIAC play.

“Playing against those DI schools gave us valuable experience that will pay off in SCIAC play,” Max Kelly (junior) added.

The team, whose record now stands at 3-8, will have two more weekends to refine their skills in tournaments before SCIAC play begins October 18.

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