The girls water polo team lost a lot last season, but new coach
Hayley Vandercook says her starting 6 are stepping in nicely
HOLLISTER
San Benito girls water polo coach Hayley Vandercook said the double days she’s implemented since the start of the season – where the Lady ‘Balers are in the pool before school starts in the morning – have gone so well, that players are admitting to having difficulty sleeping in on the weekend.
Don’t worry, though. Vandercook isn’t getting any ideas to push practice to Saturday just yet.
The first-year coach inherited a girls water polo team that not only won their first outright Tri-County Athletic League title since 2001 last season, but also earned the 6-seed in the Central Coast Section playoffs, their highest seed in school history.
But as the seasons change, so does the makeup of the team. The Lady ‘Balers lost their three leading scorers in Katie Buzzetta (88 goals), Jayme Telles (79 goals) and Lila Yoldi (42 goals), not to mention their starting goalie in Sarah Yoldi (152 saves in 23 games).
Vandercook, though, says her starting six will step in nicely, while the double-day practices – where the Lady ‘Balers have been swimming a lot more – could likely offset a recent rule change that will require teams to, among other things, swim a lot more and a lot faster.
Starting this season, the offensive shot clock in both girls and boys water polo will be reduced from 35 to 30 seconds, meaning teams will have five seconds less to swim the length of the pool and set up an offensive attack, perhaps placing an emphasis on the counter.
“I think it’s gonna depend a lot more on how fast the team is than it would have in the past,” said Vandercook, who also mentioned that with five seconds less on offense, teams will have that many more offensive possessions by the end of the game.
“It just means we have to swim more,” she added. “As soon as we heard that rule change, we upped our swimming.”
Routinely using the 30-second shot clock in practice, the Lady ‘Balers will see how it translates to their competition on Thursday when they host Evergreen Valley in Hollister at 4 p.m. From there, they’ll jump into league competition when they host Gilroy on Sept. 11.
San Benito is at rival Salinas Sept. 16, which expects to be contending as leading scorer Jordan Bell is returning, while the Lady ‘Balers will play at Santa Catalina on Oct. 28. Santa Catalina went undefeated last season in the TCAL, although lost many of their pieces from one year ago.
Vandercook says she has a good sense as to what San Benito does well, but feels their true weaknesses won’t come out until the season begins.
“[Weaknesses] will become more obvious when we’re playing other teams,” Vandercook said. “They know how each other are, so they adapt to each other. It’s whether or not they can adapt to people they don’t know that will be interesting.”
The head coach has already started nailing down some positions, with Ronnie Stern and Amanda Virak slated to be her two “dominant” hole sets. The driver position will be occupied by Sarah Kelso, Katie Schaaphok and Kelsey Russell, who played a key part in last year’s team, recording 27 goals, 22 assists and 69 steals, while Katie Thorpe and JT Temperino will alternate in the cage.
“We’re working on everybody getting to play essentially every position,” Vandercook said. “That’s pretty much the goal, that it doesn’t matter who is in where.
“Our weaknesses will come out in our first game. We’re so used to playing each other, we’ll be able to see what we need to work more on as soon as we start playing other teams. You’ll always play teams that you don’t know anything about, so you just have to adjust as the games go on, and that’s what we’re gonna do.”
