Girls’ Water Polo Suffers Two OT Losses Against Suffield and Hopkins

The girls’ varsity water polo team struggled over the past week with a 6-8 lost to Andover on Wednesday, followed by losses in both of their following games against Suffield and Hopkins in overtime last Saturday. On the bright side, all the losses were decided by less than two goals, which gives the team hope moving foward. Their record now stands at 2-4.

“Taking care of the ball on offense and moving it up to the wings to set it into hole can be improved, as well as driving and releasing to get open.”

Exeter traveled to Suffield with a chip on their shoulders from the tough loss against Andover only a few days earlier. According to Upper Emily LaRovere, when their match against Suffield started, it became clear that Exeter’s opponents were planning on playing aggressively. Despite a combinations of sloppy plays, the two teams stayed close throughout the game, bringing it to overtime. Water polo overtime is sudden death, which means that the first team to score is the winner. Unfortunately, the girls were not able to capitalize on their plays in the end and Suffield scored the golden goal.

Just like last week, the girls also played their two Saturday games back to back. The overtime disaster against Suffield hurt the team’s morale, but they continued to encourage each other. Hopkins, their second opponent, has done very well this season, but the girls were still able to compete closely with them until another loss in overtime.

According to Prep Issy Wise, the referee also missed a lot of “obvious” calls and made the match more difficult for the team. “Normally I wouldn’t put the blame on the ref,” she said. “It’s not like either of those games were the best games we’ve ever played, but I really believe that he made things worse.”

However, Big Red’s goalie, senior Madison Hillyard, was a strong factor in this game. LaRovere praised her captain. “She really saved us in the second game and stopped so many shots.” Going into overtime, many of the girls agreed that they were confident that they could score first, but their dreams were spoiled with an impressive goal from Hopkins at the end.

Moving forward, the team still has certain aspects of their game they plan to work on. “Taking care of the ball on offense and moving it up to the wings to set it into hole can be improved, as well as driving and releasing to get open,” lower Maddie Shapiro said.

The pressure is on for Big Red girls’ water polo as they need to win a few key games to improve their rocky start and make the Liquid Four playoffs. They will look to turn their season around in their games next weekend against Choate and Williston.