Polo stays afloat with two wins, two losses

by Dimitri Watson
Staff Writer

The University of La Verne's women's water polo team got their first taste of competition in a four game tournament Saturday at the Claremont Colleges Tournament, in Claremont.

The tournament did not consist of any obvious winner because the team's competition was already pre-arranged. This tournament was to gage how teams competitively played against a variety of levels.The day started off for the Leopards against the team from Cal State Bakersfield.

ULV was coming into its first game of the season, while Bakersfield had already played ten games.

"We played hard, but it was our first game and we were still developing team chemistry," junior driver Emily Tollefson said.

The second game was against UC Santa Cruz. The Leopards lost this game by three goals.

"We came out flat and struggled to execute," Tollefson said.

The third game of the day was against Chapman University, and the Leopards dominated this game, winning 12-2.

"We were fired up after losing our last game and we had something to come out and prove," Tollefson said.

"We had just come off a loss, and we were extremely hungry for a win," junior 2-meter Jennifer Pacheco said. Pacheco had to sit out this tournament because of an injury to her knee, which she had surgery on during the off-season. Her participation is questionable for the next few games.

The last game was arguably the biggest match of the day for La Verne. The Leopards faced off against the University of Villanova. Villanova is a Division I school from Pennsylvania.

"We went into this game and didn't pay any extra attention to it because it was an out of conference game. We feel like we can beat any team on any given day. The key is getting out to a good strong start, and setting the mood for the game. In this game we came out strong even though we were down early," Tollefson said.

In the first quarter ULV was down three goals. The Leopards came back in the fourth quarter to tie the game after dominating the second half.

The game remained tied at the end of the fourth quarter and the two teams were going into overtime. In overtime, it was senior driver Tandis Morgan who scored ULV's ninth goal to win the game.

"We caught on to their defense early and we were executing pretty well. We played within our game and came back to win the game in overtime.

"Our goalie Maria De Santis played great the whole tournament. Especially against Villanova who took twice as many shots as us in the overtime period, but could not score on any of them because of her great goalie play," Pacheco said.

The next game for the Leopards will be tomorrow in tournament play. The Leopards will face the University of Redlands, Michigan State, and Notre Dame. The team has hopes to continue with victories into conference games, said Desantis.