The Gilroy girls? water polo team still wasn?t at full health
for Thursday?s Tri-County Athletic League game against visiting
Santa Catalina.
Gilroy ? The Gilroy girls? water polo team still wasn?t at full health for Thursday?s Tri-County Athletic League game against visiting Santa Catalina.
The team has been battling the flu all week although it?s doubtful that it would have made a difference against the perennial powerhouse and league front-runner.
?They played as well as I expected them to,? said Mustangs? coach Tom Been after the Cougars? 17-6 win. ?It?s always tough against them. They have the top players and always have a strong team. We put in some new plays, and they executed them and scored on them. We just couldn?t stop them defensively.?
Santa Catalina coach Jim Morton offered praise the effort of the Mustangs (5-5-1, 2-2 TCAL).
?I was really impressed with what I saw (from Gilroy),? said Morton, who established the Cougars? program eight years ago. ?They took advantage of our laziness on defense. They had a lot of good drives. Gilroy showed a lot of hustle. At times, they outhustled us. It was only because of our more experienced players that the game wasn?t closer.?
One of the players on the Mustangs who showed that hustle was Meagan Collett. She scored a goal in the fourth quarter and had several more chances on steals.
Been said he was happy with the performance of goalie Talia Lauber, who stopped several tough shots during the constant onslaught.
But the Mustangs had trouble stopping Santa Catalina?s Devan Kennitev, who led all scores with seven goals. The Mustangs weren?t able to score in the third quarter.
?It was not one of our best games,? said Jenny Ailes, who led the Mustangs with a pair of goals. ?We could have done better. We could have played better defense.?
Other Mustangs who scored goals were Marie Fisher, Kelly Been and Casey Collum.
Morton, who is used to dominating league opponents, said he would like to see the competition increase. Often times, he will have his team work on things late in the game when his team is up by a big margin as was the case Thursday.
?We hope it continues to improve,? Morton said. ?But it goes in cycles. We?ll go back down in a couple years.?
Gilroy is coming off of a 9-6 victory at Notre Dame Tuesday. The Mustangs, who were missing two starters because of sickness and another who suffered from back spasms, had to overcome a 2-0 deficit to win.
JV: The JV team lost 6-5 to Santa Catalina after a last second-goal. Alex Marshall had three goals, and Kaitlin Muraoka added two.
