Boys’ Water Polo Continues Winning Streak

Boys’ water polo continued its winning streak, ending this week 5-0 after matches against Andover last Wednesday and Williston and Hopkins on Saturday. The team beat Andover at home 16-7, and played Williston and Hopkins at Williston, winning 17-2 and 13-2 respectively.

Exeter went into this week having earned great success thus far into the season and continued to show their dominance. This week also provided non-starting players with valuable play time, helping to ensure depth on Bear Polo.

Upper Taylor Walshe highlighted the team’s strong defense during the Andover match, saying, “Our hard press defense wore down Andover,” he said. Exeter had a particularly strong second quarter, scoring nine points and allowing them to let in newer players to give them experience.

The weekend games proved unchallenging for the boys of the Exeter water polo team. Captain JP Mullins said that the team “won both pretty easily.” In the match against Williston, Exeter went in strong, playing all the starters. The team was up 10-0 at the end of the first quarter. Seven of those goals were scored by upper Jamie Cassidy. “We wanted to end the game after the first quarter and we did that,” Walshe said. This early lead allowed the team to play bench players, just as in the Andover game. The team had each starter match up with a bench player, so that the more experienced members of Bear Polo could advise and mentor the next group of players.

“We feel confident about the outcome. However, these games were not against strong opponents; we still need to improve.”

The second game of the weekend against Hopkins went similarly to the other one, with the starters finding great success, allowing bench players to build skills. Unlike the Williston game, the match against Hopkins started slow, with the opposing team scoring the first goal. By half-time however, Exeter was up 11-1, allowing less experienced players to enter the pool. The team continued to find success, showing the depth on Bear Polo. Prep Andrew Sun scored his first goal of the season in the second half, eliciting enthusiasm from the rest of the team. “We were all really excited,” upper Jackson Parell said of Sun’s goal. The team as a whole was delighted to see the strength of the newer players on the team. “It was awesome to see that even with the bench players in the game we extended our lead,” said Walshe.

Team members highlighted a strong defense and fierce energy as contributing factors to the team’s success. “In both games, we came out with some really good intensity,” Mullins said.  Upper Harry Saunders felt that the factors that defined the team’s play “were a very strong press defense as well as an aggressive fast break.” Mullins echoed that sentiment, highlighting the team’s “strong defense holding [Williston and Hopkins] to just two goals per game.”

Even though the team has found great success at this point in the season, they continue to feel the need to improve and work harder. The relatively weak competition Bear Polo has faced thus far reminds the team that they must keep working to find success against harder teams, such as Brunswick, later this season.

“We feel confident about the outcome. However, these games were not against strong opponents; we still need to improve,” Saunders said. Walshe highlighted the 6-5 play as a place for the team to polish, saying “We really need to work on our man-up play because we aren’t scoring goals off of it and it’s a waste of a great opportunity.”

Next for Bear Polo is a match against St. John’s Prep on Wednesday and a home game against Choate on Saturday.