Girls’ water polo hurt by lack of key players in first tournament

Emerging from last year’s 7-5 record, the girls’ water polo team is training hard so far this season. After losing star player Nikki de Roos to graduation, the Falcons are depending on the experienced seniors such as seniors Mackenzie Rosenthal and Madison Gress to lead them.

They are now coached by Nick Berg, last year’s JV boys’ water polo coach.

“He is a swim coach at Brookside [Club of Saratoga], and that really helps the team because 70 percent of water polo is swimming,” senior goalie Puck de Roos said.

The girls won their first home game against Mountain View 7-0 on Sept. 18. Goals were scored by Gress and Amanda Moriarity, junior Jace Welton and Mackenzie Rosenthal.

“It is great to get out there and be competitive, and I’m glad that the girls were able to start their season strong by winning their first game,” Berg said. “It will give them confidence for the rest of the season.”

The players attend morning practices twice a week at 5:45 a.m. in addition to daily afternoon practices in order to rank at CCS, in which they placed third last year.

“The goal is to get to the same place in CCS we got to last year, and maybe even get further in,” de Roos said. On Sept. 12-13, the team competed at the first tournament of the year at Saint Francis High School.

Hurt by the absence of key players, the girls lost 12-2 to Clovis High School and 10-3 to Castilleja High School the following afternoon.

“I think we would’ve done better if we had everyone here, since we were missing our main offensive set and our goalie,” sophomore Jessy Liu said.

The next day, the girls also lost 4-2 to St. Ignatius High School. At the end of the tournament on Saturday afternoon, the Falcons crushed Burlingame 10-3.

The team struggled without some of its strongest players: Junior hole set Alexa Freiberg was gone from all games due to a concussion, and de Roos and Moriarity were gone from Saturday’s first game because they were taking the ACT. In order to cover for the missing positions, Sellers had to replace de Roos at goalie.

“[De Roos’s] our main advantage on defense because she’s one of the best goalies in our league, so I couldn’t really fill her shoes, but we did the best we could,” Sellers said. “We weren’t at our usual level without her [or the rest of the missing girls], so that was a handicap.”

Nonetheless, the absences of the star players allowed the remaining girls to play more and gain crucial experience.

“I think [our absence] really made some of the girls on the team step up and play new positions that they never played before,” de Roos said. “That can start to change the dynamic of the team.”

Due to printing deadlines, the Sept. 23 game against Palo Alto and the Sept. 25 game against Los Altos could not be covered in the print edition. The team will play Gunn on Sept. 30 and Homestead on Oct. 2.