Boys’ Water Polo Edges Out Andover
Water polo’s second face off against Andover this season did not disappoint. The team fought until the final seconds of a game extended into three overtimes. After a hard-fought battle, Big Red once again snatched the victory with a final score of 10-9. The boys began the game with what teammates called a slow start, but Exeter was able to stay determined and focused, allowing them to build the momentum needed to persevere through the long game and finish on top.
It was a similar story when Boys’ Water Polo traveled to Andover a couple weeks ago. After five overtimes, Big Red pulled out a win and set a record for the longest match in program history. Exeter now had home-pool advantage and knew what to expect of both their opponent and themselves.
Upper Adam Tuchler summarized the team’s outlook, saying, “Going into this game we had the mindset of winners.” Upper David Mancini elaborated that “the team desired to improve upon our first win against Andover earlier this year by getting on the fast breaks quickly and having a harder press defense.”
However, it took some time for Big Red to build momentum. “At the beginning of the game,” Mancini said, “it seemed that the home crowd was intimidating, which resulted in a slow start to our offensive game.” He continued to describe that as “the game neared the end, something clicked within all of us and we began to play as we wished. The crowd added us during the overtime periods, driving us to score.”
“Although the first half didn’t go as well as we would have liked it to, we really picked it up in the second half,” Tuchler agreed.
Lower Hayden Giles echoed such statements as well, saying, “We were sleeping most of the game, woke up when they were up with 30 seconds left.” Indeed, it was quite a wake up call. According to Giles, as the final seconds of the game ticked away on the clock, upper Cooper Walshe bulleted a quick pass to senior Michael Carbone, who buried the ball in the back of the net, sending the game into overtime. Not only was this play itself immensely invigorating, but according to Tuchler, only moments after “an Andover kid began to gloat about winning. All of a sudden we scored a goal and brought the game into overtime.”
In the end, it was senior captain Charlie Venci who put the matter to rest, scoring the winning goal for Exeter. “Charlie’s last goal, sealing the deal, pumped us like never before,” Mancini said. As put by Giles, the team simply “went back to basics, beating the Smurfs in the third OT.”
Having conquered Andover twice, the team will now turn their focus to interschols, bearing down on the competition there. “During interschols,” Mancini said, “we desire to play as well as we did during overtime against Andover from the start of the game, with the expectation of taking Loomis and Brunswick down!” Having come close to the title of champion but not all the way at the past few interschols, Exeter hopes to take it this year. When discussing such, Giles recalled the words of wisdom from Water Polo alum Jamie Cassidy, class of 2018. “Don’t call it a comeback, we’ve been here for years.”