Water polo able to improve last season’s finish

This season, the women’s water polo team had a won 14 of their 26 games.

The Lancers got off to a good start in the beginning by winning their first game, but as the team kept growing and getting new teammates, the connection needed to get rebuilt each time.

Regardless of that being a slight issue, the importance was building a relationship with one another to thrive all together.

“I felt that the more time we spent together, the close our bond got and it made it easier to play with my other teammates since we had a feel for how we played,” said team captain and utility scorer Ariahn Givens.

Although the Lancers lost three games by one goal and two games by two goals, the losses were taken hard, which pushed the team to emerge triumphantly throughout the season.

“We came together as a unit and played very well as a team,” said head coach Terry Stoddard. “There’s no doubt that because of their goals and their drive to be one team that we had the success we did.”

In spite of those goals, which propelled the Lancers to the playoffs, most of the victories were because of the team’s unity and effort.

“I feel like overall for us not to be strong swimming-wise, we did pretty well against most teams and I would say even if our swimming wasn’t there our defense was there,” said Givens.

Sticking together and having good communication helped the team to prosper.

“We are like a family and we are a team,” said freshman goalie Clarque DeYoung, who has been ranked as the No. 1 women’s water polo goalkeeper in the South Coast Conference.

With the great success on defense, this semester’s women’s water polo team proved to be the coach’s best defensive season of any team that he has coached at PCC.

“We gave up 7.6 goals per average on the season, which is the lowest number of goals against that we have ever had,” said Stoddard.

The team had a vigorous season, finishing off stronger than last year.

“We improved, we peaked at the right time and most importantly we played as a team and we had good leadership,” said Stoddard.