GILROY – The boys and girls water polo seeding for the 2009 Tri
County Athletic League tournament were announced over the weekend,
and the Gilroy High girls squad earned the No. 3 spot thanks to a
6-2 regular-season league mark.
GILROY – The boys and girls water polo seeding for the 2009 Tri County Athletic League tournament were announced over the weekend, and the Gilroy High girls squad earned the No. 3 spot thanks to a 6-2 regular-season league mark.
The two blemishes on the Lady Mustangs’ record came courtesy of the top-two seeds in the draw, Salinas (No. 1) and San Benito (No. 2).
“Anything can happen in the tournament,” said head coach Sean LaGuardia. “You are only one bad game away from not doing as well as you had thought.”
The Mustangs are looking to improve on last year’s fourth-place showing, finishing just one position shy of the Central Coast Section playoffs.
“At the beginning of the season we had set the goal of making it to CCS,” LaGuardia said. “If the girls play at their best, I think we have a shot of winning the tournament.”
The girls host Notre Dame today at 3:30 p.m. The Mustangs handled the Spirits 16-6 in the teams’ first match this season.
“We want to win three games this week,” LaGuardia said.
On the boys’ side, the Mustangs received the No. 7 seed and will face a tough Carmel team Wednesday which comes into the match as the second seed.
The Mustangs dropped their regular-season match against the Padres 8-2.
“We are going to try and make them shoot from the outside,” said boys head coach Tom Clark. “Hopefully our goalie will block some shots. We don’t really want them to get the ball inside where they can man-handle us.”
Conversely, Clark said he expects his offense to try and feed passes in the middle to the Mustangs leading scorer, Zack Kendrick.
“We actually need to drive the ball inside,” Clark said. “We have some speed that we need to work off of.”
Despite some struggles this year, Clark said the reward for winning the TCAL tournament – which is an automatic bid to the CCS playoffs – is plenty of motivation for his team.
“It is an incentive for everybody,” he said.
