Girls water polo will advance to CIF playoffs, following 29 consecutive league championships, after their final Mission League match on Jan. 26.
The team headed to Newport Beach to compete in a SoCal Invite where they went 2-2 on Jan. 23 and 24. They won against Los Alamitos High School and Alta Loma High School, and lost to Corona Del Mar High School in overtime.
Center Keisari Penman ’27 said close-game wins have boosted her confidence heading into playoffs.
“We had some very competitive games this weekend,” Penman said. “That is a very exciting thing for our team, knowing that we are going into CIF next week.
Center defender Amelia Won ’28 said the team’s tournament performance shows how prepared they are for the playoffs.
“This tournament went well, with some competitive games,” Won said. “It was great to see how we stand for CIF.”
The team will head into the CIF playoffs, likely competing in Division 1, the week of Feb. 2nd. They will be highly seeded in their division, and they will be in the same bracket as teams they have previously faced both in the preseason and season.
Penman said she is hopeful for the rest of the season and knows the team can defeat teams they lost to previously.
“The team and I are very excited to go into playoffs because there is a lot of potential for us to win CIF,” Penman said. “A lot of the teams that will end up in Division 1 are teams we either lost by one or won by one. If we tighten our game and limit our mistakes, we can beat some of the teams we lost to.”
Peman said the atmosphere of playing at home will boost the morale of the team.
“Because water polo is a winter sport and not very known, playing a CIF home game at Harvard-Westlake and having everyone there to support us would be so exciting,” Penman said. “That’s definitely motivating our team to make it far enough in CIF to host a game.”
Goalie and field player Emma Gonzalez ’29 said the team’s preparation and work are translating into their final practices before playoffs.
“Recently we had a team meeting where we basically talked about our goals for training and for playoffs, and how we can be our best as a team,” Gonzalez said. “I think we’ve been doing a really good job at applying that into practice. All of the girls are working really hard and we are definitely going to put our all into the end of season”
Penman said she is excited to implement a new game plan during playoffs.
“The team is really hyped for playoffs,” Penman said. This season we had a lot of close games to top teams. We are going to use a lot of strategies depending on if a team has a more dominant center or attackers, and hopefully us being prepared we let us thrive during our games.”
On Jan. 26, the team played against Marlborough for the league championship. Both teams entered the game undefeated in the league.
