It was a split-second decision.
Tied at 8 with Palma in the Tri-County Athletic League championship game, Jacob Garcia thought he had only one choice – fire the ball.
Reacting to a Palma foul, Garcia leaped out of the water and threw a long-range shot from mid-pool. With only seven seconds left on the clock, the Hail Mary shot was just a prayer. Not even Garcia or his head coach Aaron Gautney thought the ball would go in.
“I had no idea what he was thinking,” Gautney said.
But Garcia did. His goal was to throw the ball as hard as he could and hope for something good to happen.
“I picked up the ball and I powered up and just threw it at the goal as hard as I could,” Garcia said. “I slightly aimed and it just went fast into the goal and went in. It slipped past the goalie’s hands and it was just pure joy.”
Pool side, Gautney was speechless, he said.
“I prepared myself for overtime,” Gautney said. “I saw we had six seconds on the clock or so, and I thought it was a little early to take the shot. But it went in, so who cares?”
The goal was Garcia’s shinning moment of the season, a season that included a team-high 72 goals and 86 steals, and a 12-2 finish and league championship. For Garcia’s achievements throughout the season, he was named the co-MVP and the junior player of the year for the TCAL’s Valley Division. And for the same reasons, Garcia was chosen as the 2011 Free Lance/Pinnacle Most Outstanding Male Athlete of the Fall.
Despite the great numbers in his junior season, Garcia is still learning the game of water polo after first playing the sport in the summer before his freshman year, he said. But playing water polo in high school wasn’t a quick decision – he thought about playing the game long before entering the pool.
“I saw it on TV in Olympics. And a member of my church – his sons played years ago,” Garcia said. “So he encouraged me to go and he took me to a few college water polo games and I saw it and I just got hooked. After playing that summer with all my friends, it became a lifestyle choice.”
A lifestyle he still lives by.
Every day of every week is inundated by water polo. Two days a week he works with his water polo team, building his strength through weightlifting. Other days of the week, he takes part in the USA Olympic Development Program building his skills. And of course, he still plays with his club team, Hollister water polo with Christine Bakke.
His experience with the club team has laid the groundwork for his success in high school and beyond, Garcia said.
“That really gave me a good foundation for my skills and to learn the game,” he said. “It gave me a better foundation to learn skills and better prepare me for my freshman year.”
More than anything, though, the key to his success has been his left hand, Garcia said. The lefty uses the angles created by his strong hand to find passing and scoring lanes.
“I’m a left-handed player, which is really useful in the pool and it’s helped me score a lot of goals and get recognition,” he said. “In other sports left-handed is always crucial but in water polo it’s even more crucial because the angles to the goal are such that a right-handed person can’t get as good as an angle. There are so few left-handed players so I use that to my advantage throughout my water polo career.”
And he has. Just ask Palma.
The biggest difference for the junior over last year, when he scored 26 goals in 20 games, is his strength, he said. After last year’s 16-11 finish, Garcia dedicated himself to the gym, and it paid off.
“I definitely had a skill base before, but once I got that extra strength I found myself being able to dominate people that I wasn’t able to before,” he said. “Plus, the whole team element was different. I just had more confidence as a player this season. And after a few games I realized I could take myself to a different level.”
And that’s one of the biggest reasons why Garcia became the team’s most dominant and go-to player, Gautney said.
“He was always aggressive on offense and defense,” Gautney said. “And that desire to win. Really, when there were times where it was tight, we won games that we might not have been in otherwise. He is going to be one of the star returning players.”
But all Garcia cares about is doing his best to help the team win and improve next year, he said. The team has the atmosphere around it to do just that.
“We are like a family,” Garcia said. “We gel. We are with each other every day and night. It’s like having another arm as your team. It really helps in communication – we know what’s going to happen. It led to our wins this year.”
