WATER POLO ‘mdash; It was a bitter, unforgiving weekend in Irvine for the No. 18 Tritons. Coming into the UC Irvine Invitational last Saturday as the No. 15 seed and ranked 16th nationally in the standings, the women’s water polo team suffered four consecutive losses against teams ranked among the top 15.
‘It was disappointing,’ head coach Larry Sanders said of the tournament results. ‘I really felt there were some games that we lost that we should have won.’
After suffering one-sided defeats in the first day of competition, the Tritons showed improvement on Sunday in losing efforts against No. 11 Michigan University and No. 13 Cal State Long Beach.
The Tritons and the Wolverines battled it out defensively in the early going, pulling to a 1-1 tie at halftime. Neither team was able to hold an advantage in the third quarter and the period ended in a 3-3 tie.
Things fell apart for the Tritons in the final period as the Wolverines’ endurance proved too much for UCSD to handle. Michigan scored four goals in the fourth quarter, handing the Tritons a tough 7-3 loss.
In their final match of the weekend, the Tritons played a bare-knuckle, wire-to-wire match against Cal State Long Beach, which ended in a 9-8 sudden-death victory for the 49ers. The Tritons came out exceptionally strong, holding on to a one-point lead after the first, second and third quarters before letting Cal State Long Beach tie it up to force overtime. In the first time out, the Tritons came out with an early lead, 7-6, before the 49ers fought to tie it up, yet again, and force sudden death.
‘We just made some silly mistakes that the other team capitalized on,’ Sanders said. ‘We need to fix those for our season.’
The Tritons were thrust into the second-best team in the nation’s line of fire right off the bat, facing off against Stanford University in the opening game of the tournament. UCSD played tough, but the Cardinal was too much to handle as the Tritons fell by a score of 16-6, with junior utility Stephanie Heinrich scoring a team-high five goals.
The Tritons led by a margin of 4-3 after the first quarter in their effort against Western Water Polo Association rival No. 9 Loyola Marymount University, but could not maintain that lead. UCSD was outscored 6-1 in the second quarter, entering halftime trailing 9-5. The difference proved too much for the Tritons to overcome, falling to Loyola Marymount by a final score of 14-8. Senior attacker Sydney Gstettenbauer’s five goals were not enough to lead UCSD to victory over the Lions.
‘We had some tough games this weekend, but it was a great experience for our team that can only help us down to the road to winning conference,’ junior utility Stephanie Bocian said.
Despite the four tournament losses, Sanders said the Tritons showed improvement from their early season play.
‘We just played two games that I think we could have won,’ Sanders said.
The Tritons next compete against No. 10 UC Irvine on Feb. 27 at Canyonview Pool at 6 p.m. before hosting No. 16 Long Beach State on Feb. 28 at noon.
Readers can contact Tyler Nelson at [email protected].