Girls water polo season ends in district semifinal

The wind was not strong, but it was enough to chill Lake Howell’s swimming pool, the setting for the district semifinals. The girls water polo team came in as the underdogs, but that did not faze senior Sofia Galiano, who scored most of the points in the game.

On March 29, girls water polo competed in the district semifinals against Lake Howell. The team would fall 15-4 with Galiano’s three goals, finishing the season 3-19.

The team didn’t hit their stride for the majority of the season, losing 16 of their games before winning one. They won three of their last four games against Winter Springs with a score of 11-3, Colonial with a score of 9-8 and Timber Creek, their best game of the season, where the team scored 20 points behind senior Alexane Ayup with six and Galiano with seven.

“It gave more of a morale boost than anything because our new girls had never felt that winning feeling. It helped us push through the last stretch of the 23 games we played,” sophomore Eleanor Russo said.

Seniors take up the majority of the roster, and the team’s reliance on seniors has been a concern. As they leave each year, inexperienced underclassmen have been forced to step up earlier than expected.

“We had to train so many of our players, including me, from scratch. I think we did alright with what we had,” senior Helen Zou said. “There were individual games we probably could have won if we had more players that day, or other reasons like that.”

With a roster of mostly juniors going into next year, the youth of the team and the coaches, who have only been coaching for two years, will give everyone more room for improvement for the future.

“We probably could have been better off if we had more practices near the beginning of the season instead of the extreme amount of games,” Zou said. “While you do learn a lot during games, knowing what is going on first allows for more understanding and opportunity for experimentation.”