Coming off a season with a final record of 1-20, the varsity water polo team has made strides towards improvement and have seen some positive results.
“The constant effort by our team has led to vast improvements in games,” sophomore Adam Barr said. “It takes a long time to fully understand this game, but we’re constantly improving as a team.”
These improvements were a goal for the team at the beginning of the season.
“Our team goal this season was to be one of the top 16 teams in the state and play a game at the Rec-Plex during the District tournament,” Barr said. “I think that we are in a very good position to do that.”
These are high hopes for the team since it suffered a loss in the first round of the tournament a year ago. However, they stayed optimistic.
“I definitely had higher expectations leading into the season,” senior captain Natsu Gavin said. “Much of our team has been improving individually this past year, so I wanted to see us place higher this year at conference.”
Over the off-season, many players such as Barr, Gavin, junior Tess Coulson and sophomores Hiroki Gavin, John Destefano and Luke Oliver played club water polo to gain that individual improvement.
The team has a better record as well; it is 5-11 as of press time, but, according to head coach, Mr. Andrew Schonhoff, many of those games have been against top 10 teams in the state. Taking this into consideration, they are making steps toward improvement. Along with the improved skill level and record, the team had a signature moment in its 11-9 victory over Chaminade in the first game of the season.
“Beating Chaminade was terrific,” senior Zach Farkas said. “It was a huge morale boost. Our varsity team had not been able to beat them for a while, so it was exciting to defeat them and start the season off with a win.”
The athletes say they have worked individually in order to improve as a team. However, they still realize the importance of the job that their coach has done.
“We’re playing a lot better this year because a lot of us spent the last year working hard and improving individually but also because Coach Schonhoff has been harder on us and pushing us to our limits in practice,” Gavin said.
This is just his second year as the coach of the team, but Schonhoff, a competitive water polo player himself, has already been able to make an impact.
Schonhoff believes that all of the hard work and his positive influence on the team does not have much importance if he does not get to see his athletes succeed though. This is why he is looking forward to the rest of the season and the possible wins on the horizon.
“It’s been a great opportunity for us to learn and improve by playing higher competition,” Schonhoff said. “The rest of our season has a lot of winnable games for us, and I’m confident that all the improvement the team has made so far will pay off in wins as we push towards the post-season.”