The San Benito High boys water polo team found the right time to
get hot.
Cupertino – The San Benito High boys water polo team found the right time to get hot.
As a result, the ‘Balers earned some valuable power points Saturday in the Monta Vista Tournament and will head into this week’s Tri-County Athletic League tournament on a winning streak.
San Benito beat Santa Cruz Athletic League champion Soquel 12-9 in Saturday’s early action – collecting the four points associated with beating a league champion – and came back and beat tournament host Monta Vista 7-5 to win its bracket of the round-robin tournament.
The ‘Balers improved their record to 17-7, but won’t find out until Sunday how important these extra wins will be in improving their Central Coast Section playoff seeding.
“I’ve got a hunch that it’s really going to make a difference,” San Benito coach Tom Agan said. “It could pop us up a couple spots.”
The ‘Balers didn’t learn until Friday that they would be playing Soquel on Saturday morning. A team backed out of the tournament and San Benito had a game available to add to its schedule so it agreed to play.
“We decided it wasn’t going to hurt us,” Agan said.
Dave Smith scored six times in the game, with James Schafer, Adam Rianda and Rory Bloch each adding two tallies.
Smith added four more goals in the win over Monta Vista. Schafer again scored twice and John Kaplanis added a goal for the ‘Balers, who knew they needed a strong performance in this tournament to set themselves up in a good position for this weekend’s TCAL action.
“I think we were focused,” Agan said. “We knew we had to take some wins out of this tournament.”
San Benito, which is the top seed in the TCAL tournament, will play against an opponent to be determined on Friday at 2:30pm at Cal State Monterey Bay. A win would likely set up a rematch with Salinas in the championships game Saturday at 4pm at Santa Catalina.
“It’s a real confidence builder for us,” Agan said of the tournament wins. “But we’ve got to stay focused. Salinas is going to be tough.”
