DETERMINATION: Boys’ Water Polo conditions hard to recover from a loss of players.
By Kayla Iles, Editor
This year, the Boys’ Water Polo team has suffered from the lack of key players from the class of 2015. Five seniors graduated last year, three of which were starters. In order to offset these losses, the team has had to practice much more. “Although our team is physically small this year, we have a lot of talent and hope to excel in the water,”Co-Captain Scott Bynum (12) expressed. So far, they have had two tournaments, the Newport and Riverside tournament, in which they lost a couple games but were largely successful. The boys are “still adapting to playing without [their] two main 2-meter players,” Varsity player Braden McPhail (11) added. They have had to adjust their game plan to display their strengths against other teams. This year, the team agenda is to “counter and out-swim our opponents in order to put us on the board,” Co-Captain Kris McVeigh (12) explained.
The boys’ goal this season is to win the League Champion title and advance to the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) playoffs to compete for a Division 5 Championship title. Although the boys were knocked out of CIF in the past, the boys aspire to “stay undefeated in league and win CIF,” McPhail stated.
In the Division 1 Newport tournament, the team won two out of five games, but in the Riverside tournament, they won four out of five. League games have not started yet, but the boys are well-prepared as they have been “running more plays and shooting,” McPhail commented. On October 1, 2015 the team played against Chaparral High School. They beat the Pumas 12-10, and “were glad to have had a good game and get a win under [their] belt,” Bynum expressed. It will be an uphill battle for these boys when CIF comes around, but they are working hard to bring home a title for Poly.