On Thursday, Oct. 23, the Aragon girls varsity water polo team continued their dominance in the Peninsula Athletic League (PAL) Ocean division, defeating the San Mateo High School Bearcats 16-2 and advancing their league-leading record to 7-1.
The win was icing on the cake for the Lady Dons, who already claimed a spot in the Central Coast Section (CCS) tournament with a win over Mercy-Burlingame on Oct. 21. This will be the team’s first appearance in the tournament since 2009.
The Dons, who already defeated the Bearcats 20-2 earlier in the season, approached the game differently this time around. Coach Roxanne Tursi says, “We were trying to keep the high level of expectations for ourselves by not just running the score up on counters, but using our offensive setup, driving, trying to earn ejections — skills that we’re going to need to draw on in later, more challenging games. Sometimes we were tempted by easy goals, but that won’t help us in future games.”
Freshman player Madeline Loar agrees, saying, “We were trying to incorporate what we had been working on [in practice]. I feel like we drove a lot more than we have been because of that.”
The Lady Dons started the game slowly, allowing the Bearcats to score the first goal of the game 1:30 into the first quarter, before stepping on the accelerator and ending the first quarter with a 3-1 lead.
Aragon then dominated the second quarter, outscoring San Mateo 8-1 and taking a 11-2 lead into the break. Three of the eight goals came from senior Tessa Draper. San Mateo’s second and final goal of the game came with 0:12 remaining in the first half, but the Dons got the last say, with a goal by Draper with three seconds left in the half.
After halftime, with their sizable lead, the Dons made adjustments in preparation for future matches. Tursi says, “I told them to, instead of just fouling, to go for the steal, because we need to continue to apply more pressure on defense by not just giving them a free pass, but by gunning for those steals, and forcing turnovers because that’s what we want to do to teams in the future.”
With a solid lead, Tursi put in some of the team’s substitutes, until she took them out during a timeout in the fourth quarter. She says, “I called the timeout because the team was struggling still to implement the set play. I took out my starters, let them think about [the set play] for a little bit, then called the timeout and put them back in.”
At the sound of the final buzzer, Aragon secured the win with a score of 16-2.
Next up, the Lady Dons will honor the team’s seniors in the annual senior game at home on Oct. 30 at 3:00 against Terra Nova.
