Hayley Vandercook is starting to get used to this. For the
second straight season, the third-year head coach of the San Benito
High girls water polo team is feeling the impacts of graduation.
After losing arguably the league’s top player in Kelsey Russell
after her first season with the Balers, Vandercook enters this fall
without her top two netminders from the year before, as well as the
team’s top two goal scorers.
HOLLISTER
Hayley Vandercook is starting to get used to this.
For the second straight season, the third-year head coach of the San Benito High girls water polo team is feeling the impacts of graduation. After losing arguably the league’s top player in Kelsey Russell after her first season with the Balers, Vandercook enters this fall without her top two netminders from the year before, as well as the team’s top two goal scorers.
“It’s the nature of any sport,” said Vandercook, who will look to offset the combined 89 goals scored by graduating seniors Demi Gatrell and Amanda Virak, both of whom were all-league selections last season.
“They look different. We’ll have to play a totally different way,” Vandercook added. “We’ll have to compete in other areas.”
While the starting rotation will certainly differ from a year ago, the Balers have several returning players who’ll help make the transition more of a seamless one, most notably Caitlin Schafer.
The sophomore sprinter enters her second season at the varsity level, one year after posting impressive all-around numbers for San Benito. As a freshman, Schafer had 41 goals, 48 assists and a team-leading 87 steals. She was named second team all-league as a result.
Also returning to the starting rotation will be Lauren Lango, who will play hole defense, as well as utility players and captains Hannah Smith and senior Jeanett Rodriguez, who is a fourth-year varsity player.
Vandercook said one of the reasons she chose Rodriguez to captain the Balers this year is because of her mental approach to the game.
“She takes it very seriously,” Vandercook said.
The Balers recorded a 7-1 record in the TCAL last season, 13-8 overall, and as a result earned the league’s No. 2 seed entering the year-end tournament. But a surprising 9-8 loss to No. 3 Gilroy in the semifinals kept San Benito out of the championship round, while a second loss to Stevenson prevented the Balers from advancing further to the Central Coast Section playoffs.
Rodriguez, Vandercook said, will “take that experience and relay it to the other girls on the team and of the importance of stepping it up at the end of the season.”
San Benito’s season, meanwhile, begins Friday and Saturday at a tournament in Clovis.
The Balers should have a better understanding of each and every position following the conclusion of the Clovis tournament. At press time on Wednesday, Vandercook said the hole set position, which was occupied by Virak last season, has not been decided upon.
One starting position that’s already been sealed for San Benito is netminder. The loss of both goalies in Katie Thorpe and JT Temperino from last year’s squad left a gaping hole for the Balers, but Vandercook may have the prototypical replacement in Marieke Liem.
A senior, the 6-foot Liem played volleyball her freshmen year but suffered a back injury at the end of the season, preventing her from further competing in the sport. She didn’t get involved with water polo until her sophomore year when her polo-playing friends, noticing her length, tried to recruit her for the pool.
“I was looking around for a new sport to do,” recalled Liem, who is entering her third year playing polo. “People kept coming up to me (about water polo) because I was tall.”
After having to learn some basic technique her sophomore year, like how to do an eggbeater kick — “It took me a month to get it down,” she said — Liem developed a quick attraction to the sport, calling it the “perfect hybrid” between two of her interests, swimming and volleyball.
She attended polo camps at Pepperdine and San Diego State as a result, and played for the Stanford club team last winter as well. While water polo was off the radar three years ago, Liem now wants to compete in the sport in college.
“Our team is really close this year,” Liem said of San Benito. “We’re a little small, but we’re really close and I think we work together better when we’re like this.”
Although 2010 marks Liem’s “first official” varsity season, she was called up last year and trained under senior starter Katie Thorpe. And Vandercook expects Liem to follow in Thorpe’s footsteps.
“I expect Marieke to take over where Katie left off, and Katie was one of the best goalies in the league,” Vandercook said. “I expect her to hold up the defensive end of the pool.
“The goalie is the most important person in water polo, regardless, so the goalie is always the most important key. I expect my girls to be coming back on defense, but I trust her to take down shots.”
