With a new water polo season starting JV is seeing brand new faces to the team and players to the game. The JV Girls have a lot of new faces on the team this year such as Danielle Herley, Mia Breeze, and Chloe Khokhar. Junior Varsity player Sarah Morley who plays hole set for the team says “I’m looking forward to getting to know all the new freshman who are on the team and how they will work with our team.”
Water polo isn’t an easy sport at all but to make it even more difficult for the girls they have been practicing every day from three o’clock to five o’clock since early August, and it has been nonstop work since then. Also, during summer they had double days and had to practice for four hours on those days. The practices consist of lap swimming, throwing, defense, and catching. Sometimes there is a scrimmage with the Varsity team. This training ,with other hard work, will help the team to beat their competitors.
The girls first game was on Thursday, August 31 and they played the Soquel Knights. Soquel has been the best team in their league for the past couple years. The girls lost 21-1. After the game, Chiara Chatfield who is one of the Junior Varsity captains said “I think we need a lot of improvement as a team and if we work hard enough together we will be able to win some games. Also we did play the best team in our league so every game won’t go like that.” The other captain for Junior Varsity is Hannah Zolezzi. She said “I think we need to work on our setup and the rules of the game. Also we need to work on our endurance.” When asked about her personal goals for the year, she said “I need to work on my shooting and I need to be able to get higher out of the water so I can have a stronger shot”.
Once again the coaches for JV girls water polo team are Mike Ayers and Kurt Edwards. JV player Callie Solberg says ” Mike and Kurt work as a great team together and they always make sure we are working our hardest, Mike is a great leader and helps push the team to improve our skills and Kurt is extremely supportive and a constant backbone for the team.” It’s safe to say that coach Kurt and coach Mike are very nice to the players while being able to keep a good controlled team.
The girls will be playing on Tuesdays and Thursdays all the way until October 19th. They have home games on September 12th, 19th, and 21st and October 10th and the 19th. They play on the road on September 14th, 26th, and 28th and October 5th, 12th, 14th, 17th. Let’s hope the Cougars can bring home a winning record this year.
By Reim Olmsted
The Claw 