The West High Girls Water Polo team played their first tournament of the season on Friday and Saturday, December 9th and 10th against different schools at Arcadia High School. They played a total of five games, but only won one. The victory game was against Arcadia High with a score of 10 – 6. According to Alexis Ivans (11), “The other games did not go as well because we were just getting used to playing as a team [since] we only have one varsity team and no JV or rosh-soph. So playing in [the] Varsity Tournament was difficult, but we learned a lot and were successful.”
Rei Bertoldi (12) added, “The [victory] was close; however the games that we lost were very close as well. We could have done better, but this was good for a start.” On Friday they had a bad start with the four losing games but on Saturday they got back on track by winning the last game.
The other games were close and had helped them stay in the Burbank Tournament. The scores are left unsaid; however the last game that they played and actually won was especially thanks to Hana Otsuka (11) who scored the winning goal and the crowd erupted ecstatically. As Otsuka recalled, “We were really glad that we won a game because our last winning game was in my freshmen year against culver.” The tournament was a great experience to start off this season. Otsuka put in, “We learned from each other, which players are good at this and that and what we needed to work on more.” The team does not have that many players, but are strong this season and will continue to practice hard and hopefully win more games. This was just a start for the Water Polo team and they plan to succeed in future games.