Boys’ water polo fighting to keep heads above water after string of losses

After sustaining several losses, the boys’ varsity water polo season is off to a rough start with a league record of 1-4.

On Sept. 18, the team lost its first game against Mountain View 16-6 . Since then, the team has lost 17-10 to Palo Alto on Sept. 23, 11-5 to Los Altos on Sept. 25 and 17-2 to Gunn on Sept. 30.

On Oct. 2, the team beat 9-6 Homestead.  

Players are trying to build on the momentum of the first league win.

“I think our most important game so far was the Homestead game,” said junior Mason Lee. “We really came together as a team for the first time.”

Having made eight goals each, Lee and junior Davis Robertson are leading the team so far.  The team has made a total of 30 goals this season.

Junior Micah Lee said leadership and coordination have gotten better over the season.

“I personally think that the captains [Graham Schmelzer and Lee] and our team as a whole communicated really well [in the Homestead game],” Micah said.

He attributes losses to a large skill gap between the team’s best and worst players.

On the other hand, junior Arnav Pawar points to the youth of the team.

“Being in an upper league and losing over half of our varsity team in the same year has really affected the [number] of games we have won so far in the season,” Pawar said. “[However], given the fact that we have an extremely new team, I think that we improve a lot with each game we play, whether we win or not.”

In particular, Pawar believes the team can improve on its awareness in the pool.

“[We can make] sure that the work is evenly distributed on both offense and defense in order to effectively play to our many unique players’ strength and weaknesses,” Pawar said.

Lee said moving up a league has meant the Falcons can’t pile up wins the way they did in the lower league.

”This season has been especially difficult because we are playing much harder teams,” said Lee. “[We] just need to continue to master the fundamentals and then carry that into games.”

The team is looking forward to avenging its loss against  Monta Vista during its home game on Oct. 30 — a matchup that will pit two evenly matched teams against each other.