Boys Water Polo continues their impressive pre-season with a tournament win, and they now head into league with a 12-2 record. The tournament took place on September 21 and 22, and the Trojans had victories over Ocean View, Mission Viejo, California, and Cajon High Schools.
With a difficult tournament format that required a team effort, Coach Jesse Briggs was pleased with the contributions from everyone on the team.
“I thought they came together as a team pretty well, playing four games in about 18 hours is not easy to do, and they all came together to chip in and do that and everyone gets to play a lot in that moment, and carry their own weight, and I thought they did well, “ Briggs said.
Sophomore Matt Wallin also commended the team’s ability to play well throughout the tournament.
“Our team endured through all four games,” Wallin said.
Wallin contributed in a massive way, scoring the game winning goal in the overtime thriller against California High School in the third game.
“Our closest game was our third game of the tournament, and we were tight with them the whole way, they tied it up, and it came down to the last few seconds of overtime period and we pulled it off,” Coach Briggs said.
Briggs believed this game proved a lot about the team.
“It was a really good game for us to show some strength and push through a hard opponent,” Briggs said.
The team played well in multiple aspects to come out with the trophy.
“We were running an offense pretty well… Our younger guys like [sophomore] Stewart [Campbell] played really well, our goalie (Senior Cameron Bernardo), I can’t say enough good things about him, he had some great blocks in the game we had to win, and he is probably the standout right now,” Briggs said.
Cameron Bernardo was happy that the team’s dedication resulted in a trophy.
“Our defense was on point and I feel like we really deserved this win. We haven’t won a tournament in a really long time and the hard work we have put in payed off,” Bernardo said.
Sophomore Liam Horan also commended the team’s efforts.
“The tournament was really awesome for our team, and we had a really killer defense which in the end lead to us getting the trophy,” Horan said.
Water Polo hopes to continue performing well in league matchups against Woodbridge and Beckman on October 2 and 4 respectively.