With a watered-down Tri-County Athletic League, it’s safe to say we can expect more afternoons like San Benito’s dual thrashing of visiting Watsonville on Tuesday. For those uninitiated in the makeup of such runaway victories, here’s a crash course in Water Polo Blowout 101.
Signs your team would be better off holding an intra-squad scrimmage:
1. You take a 6-0 lead 3 minutes into the game.
2. You call off your counterattack after just one quarter of play, already leading 12-1.
3. You sub in a field player for your goalie, eliciting laughs from your fans and other players.
4. You install restrictions: limiting your shots to one hand, only shooting with 5 seconds left on the shot clock, etc.
5. You pull one of your players, intentionally handing a man-up advantage to your opponent.
6. And finally, your players start giving in-game advice to their hapless counterparts.
Yep, those Lady ‘Balers sure had a tough task with Watsonville in town … trying to hold their own interest and that of their fans as best they could. Not that either team should be blamed for this, mind you.
While San Benito (9-2, 3-0 TCAL) was coming off its victory in the Independence Sixer Tournament, the Wildcatz were fresh off … swim lessons?
“I’ve got kids, it’s like their third day out here,” Watsonville head coach Neil Aratin said after his team’s 20-3 defeat. “Not only am I teaching water polo, I’m teaching swimming.”
Yet these two teams find themselves in the same league, creating such a mismatch that San Benito coach Lacey Sutton said “Neither team’s getting anything out of it.”
With longtime TCAL powerhouse Live Oak now in the Blossom Valley Athletic League, both the boys’ and girls’ water polo leagues lost a top-of-the-heap competitor. And with former Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League teams such as Monterey and Watsonville joining other building programs, the TCAL finds itself having an extreme disparity in the level of play between the top dogs (San Benito and Salinas) and those in the doghouse (take your pick of the rest).
“It’s nowhere near where it was before,” said Sutton, who finished her ‘Baler playing days in 2002. “This league isn’t very strong anymore.”
“We want to be challenged,” said San Benito co-captain Jarae Tanner, whose team also throttled Monterey 20-7 last week. “We want to get better.”
But after such lopsided wins, are the ‘Balers getting better?
Asked whether a day of practice might have been more beneficial for the team, San Benito’s Valerie Nicolason said “Sadly, probably. You don’t want to say you play down to their level, but … at practice, we’re learning more compared to today’s game.”
While Aratin was adamant that his Wildcatz were doing plenty of learning, he could understand San Benito’s position. “We’ve just kind of been on life support,” the Watsonville coach said, noting the lack of an age-group swimming program feeding into the high school’s aquatics. “They’re all novices, you know what I mean? They should all be JV.”
The final score could have been worse – much worse – but whose interests would that serve? As it stood, the ‘Balers tried to keep it as pleasant a walloping as possible for Watsonville (0-7, 0-3 TCAL).
“We try to make it a learning experience for everyone,” said Tanner, a field player who took over goalie duties in the second half. “We don’t want to try to hurt someone’s feelings.”
Added Nicolason: “In the last quarter, I was giving one of the (Watsonville) girls tips. ‘When there’s a turnover, get your hips up and get moving.’ Or ‘Call for the ball.’ They seemed like they were just sitting there.”
While the later boys’ contest at least saw the starters playing the bulk of the game, San Benito nonetheless dished out a 15-4 beating to the Wildcatz. On the heels of their 17-4 bludgeoning of Monterey last week, the ‘Baler boys now sit at 3-0 in league play, but even the players admit their narrow win over Salinas was the only contest of significance.
Senior 2-meter player James Schafer said that while San Benito (8-2) is in the driver’s seat in the TCAL, the players need to approach each match determined to work on the facets of the game that will improve their chances in the Central Coast Section playoffs. “We need to go in with the mindset that we’re not the best team,” he said. “We need to go in and play hard from the first minute to the last.”
But with an underwhelming docket of league games, that might be the greatest challenge of all as the TCAL season progresses for the ‘Baler teams.
“There are a lot of really good teams out there,” Tanner said, “but we’re just not playing them.”
Or, as David Smith concluded: “I think we’re going to have a lot more games like this.”
