University of La Verne men’s water polo team is now third in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. The Leopards lost their second SCIAC game against two tough competitors this past week.
They played against Whittier College Poets this Wednesday and it was a dirty game. The Leopards started the game off strong and within the first minute of the game when freshman utility Anthony Hernandez passed the ball to senior driver Owen Barrett, who scored the first goal to put ULV on top, 1-0.
Unfortunately, La Verne did not keep its strong defense throughout the game, allowing the Poets to come back and score.
In the first half of the game, La Verne had 12 attempted shots and the Poets only had seven.
The Poets had much speed and were extremely aggressive in their defense.
Their defense was ugly, with punches being thrown at the La Verne team members and plenty of pushing and shoving. The Leopards quickly got upset and unfortunately allowed that to overcome their ability to win the game.
“They are a really harsh rivalry, almost a bitter hate,” assistant coach Alex La said.
La Verne’s junior utility Will Broer tried to bring the team back together and shot an awesome goal, putting the team back on the board. The men tried to pull themselves together and remember that it is a game and not a fighting match.
The referees were extremely unfair in calling La Verne for the aggressive defense and allowed Whittier to get away with cheap hits.
The second half did not get any better when ULV teammates Duncan Cox and Justin Haas got a penalty for defending themselves against a Poet. The people in the stands got involved and began to yell at the referees. One La Verne parent was actually ejected from the facilities due to his reaction towards a referee after a call.
The Leopards had nine attempted shots in the second half and Whittier had 10. La Verne did score a few more goals by junior driver Jared Carvitto and freshman utility Andrew McPartland. Even though the Leopards tried their best to come back and beat Whittier, they came home with a loss, 10-5.
“We played a little better towards the end, we started shooting more,” La said. “We seemed a little hesitant at first but we scored three goals in the fourth quarter, and that’s how we have to play.”
Saturday was another heartbreaking day for the Leopards. They played against the University of Redlands in Redlands, losing, 10-2.
The only two goals of the game were by Broer and freshman utility Seth Shelton.
La Verne was tied with Redlands for first place in SCIAC and was extremely disappointed to lose the battle for first.
Then men have two more SCIAC games for the season. The first game is today against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and the other is tomorrow against Occidental.
Melissa Rodriguez can be reached at mrodriguez2@ulv.edu.