Water polo hits waves

By Gina Massetani

Santa Clara faced off against some of the top teams in the nation at the San Jose Spartan Invite last weekend.

The Broncos went up against No. 9 San Jose State University and No. 19 University of Pacific on Saturday before playing No. 3 Cal and No. 13 UC Davis to wrap up the schedule. After falling in the opener against the Spartans 10-5, Santa Clara was unable to upset any of the three remaining teams, losing 16-4, 11-2 and 13-8 respectively.

The Broncos knew how tough the competition was and how difficult the matches were going to be, and were unsure of how they would fare.

"We were pretty prepared as far as how aggressive they were going to be," said Junior Laura Espinosa. "We learned throughout the weekend that we needed to front and press out the ball. After our University of Pacific game we boosted our counter-attack and it really impacted our game."

Even though the Broncos lost all four games this weekend the team remains optimistic about the season and conference. Santa Clara will be able to use what they picked up from the losses in their conference opener this Saturday.

"We played pretty well. All four teams we played were ranked ahead of us," said Head Coach Keith Wilbur. "We lost all four games, but I saw good things in all four games. They showed me good character and worked hard and I liked what I saw."

Coach Wilbur has been the head coach for both the men's and women's water polo teams for the past nine years. However, this year is different than previous years because over two-thirds of the team is underclassmen, making it a very young and inexperienced team.  

"There is a lot more youth on the team so we have a lot more players that are learning," said Wilbur. "We are pretty athletic. We have a lot of speed on the team, and have a lot of strength."

He noted that the schedule was tough due to the strong teams they faced, but that the high level of conditioning helped them to contend.

"Usually after the first game I think that the team needs to get in better shape. However, now I think we can hang with these guys."

Starter Espinosa added, "We improved a lot throughout the weekend. We had a minor setback with the University of Pacific game, but we came out hard for San Jose State and we were prepared to play against these top 20 teams to the best of our ability. As a start this is a really good place to be as a team."

Both Wilbur and Espinosa commented that one of the Broncos' greatest strengths throughout the weekend was their energy level. Even when Santa Clara was down significantly the women never ruled themselves out; their energy resulted in close matches to some of the best teams in the nation.

"In the past years when we played these teams we did not come out as hard or with as much energy," said Espinosa. "I remember last year we played Cal and we lost drastically. This year we are a stronger and faster team and the games reflected that. There were no counter-attacks against us; we shut them down."

This weekend the Broncos will play their first conference game against Cal State Monterey Bay, who beat UOP. Monterey Bay is not a ranked team, but is very successful due to their unique style of defense. Santa Clara kept a close eye on the UOP versus Monterey match to see if they could find any weaknesses to exploit.

Espinosa explained that this week of practice will mostly focus on breaking through this distinctive defense.

"If we can somehow beat their defense than we can capitalize," said Espinosa. "A lot of teams have gotten thrown off by their type of defense, which is where they got a lot of counter-attacks off of. If we can beat that type of defense we can compete."

Contact Gina Massetani at gmassetani@scu.edu or (408) 551-1918.