A little more than two weeks ago, on Sept. 15, San Benito High
girls’ water polo head coach Hayley Vandercook discussed her team’s
intensity in the first quarter. Coming off a 10-7 loss to Salinas,
in which the Lady Balers trailed by four goals after seven minutes
of play, Vandercook stressed the importance of setting the tone
from the start.
Hosting Monterey on Wednesday, San Benito’s first Tri-County
Athletic League match since Sept. 15, the Lady Balers jumped out to
an early five-goal lead en route to a comfortable 20-11 victory
over the visiting Toreadors.
HOLLISTER
A little more than two weeks ago, on Sept. 15, San Benito High girls’ water polo head coach Hayley Vandercook discussed her team’s intensity in the first quarter. Coming off a 10-7 loss to Salinas, in which the Lady Balers trailed by four goals after seven minutes of play, Vandercook stressed the importance of setting the tone from the start.
Hosting Monterey on Wednesday, San Benito’s first Tri-County Athletic League match since Sept. 15, the Lady Balers jumped out to an early five-goal lead en route to a comfortable 20-11 victory over the visiting Toreadors.
“We’ve worked on coming out better in the first quarter,” Vandercook said. “My starters took care of that (on Wednesday), which is nice to see.
“But just the intensity they came out with today is the intensity they need for Salinas.”
Another match with undefeated Salinas might not come until the TCAL Championships at the end of the year, however. Although the Cowboys are scheduled to compete at the H2Oktoberfest on Oct. 10 in Hollister, there is no guarantee the two rivals will meet up.
Vandercook believes a better start against the Cowboys could have been the difference two weeks ago, and San Benito has been working on strong first-quarter play ever since.
Behind a pair of scores from Demi Gatrell, the Lady Balers carried a 5-0 lead on Wednesday against Monterey, 6-2 after one complete quarter.
Gatrell finished with three goals.
San Benito took a 10-5 lead to the half, and played a much more physical style of polo than perhaps the Toreadors were used to. The Lady Balers caused frequent turnovers in the third quarter, while also utilizing their speed to get down the pool and set up uncontested scoring opportunities.
With San Benito scoring the first five goals of the third quarter to garner a 15-5 lead, Vandercook cleared her bench and substituted in her second string.
The Lady Balers are now 2-1 in the TCAL, 5-4 overall.
Hannah Smith led the Lady Balers with six goals Wednesday, while Caitlin Schafer pocketed four goals and had two assists. Amanda Virak added three goals.
Wednesday’s match against Monterey was just the third match San Benito has had since Sept. 11. Vandercook said under league rules teams can only have 22 matches in the regular season, and the Lady Balers had five at a tournament in Clovis to open their 2009 campaign.
This weekend, San Benito will compete at a tournament in Aptos. On Friday, the Lady Balers will open with Pioneer at 2 p.m., then play Harbor at 6 p.m. Tournament play is scheduled to continue into Saturday.
SBHS Boys Water Polo
Knotted 6-6 at the break with Monterey, the San Benito High boys’ water polo team made some second-half adjustments to shut out the visiting Toreadors Wednesday en route to a 14-6 victory in Hollister.
Nick Angulo and Josh Schafer each scored five goals apiece for the Balers, which improve to 2-1 in the Tri-County Athletic League, 5-6 overall.
Trevor Agan had 10 saves in the cage for San Benito, while Tyler Agan and Eric Nicolaysen each contributed two goals each.
San Benito head coach Tom Agan disagreed with some of the officiating in the first half, and tweaked the offense in the third and fourth quarters as a result. Instead of setting up the offense around the whole set, Agan opted for more driving and one-on-one situations.
“We kind of had to change the offense a bit,” Agan said. “It worked a little bit. I wouldn’t say it was a total success.
“We tried to go no set and run without a two-meter.”
The driving offense worked well enough for the Balers to score eight second-half goals.
As for the defense, though, which held Monterey without a goal in the second half, Agan didn’t make a single change during the match.
“We didn’t change it up,” he said. “We just might have done a little bit better job with it.”
San Benito will return to TCAL play on Monday when they will host Watsonville at 3:30 p.m.
