Friday, September 18th and Saturday the 19th were the dates of the Girl’s Sierra Shootout Varsity Water Polo tournament. For their first tournament of the season, the CKM Girls water polo team played exceptionally. Up against tough teams, the Varsity Girls water polo team won three games and lost two.
The Girls’ Sierra Shootout tournament was at the Sierra College Aquatics center in Rocklin. They played games against Del Oro (Loss 0-7), San Marin (Win 9-4), and Dixon (Win 6-2) on Friday as well as Clayton Valley (Loss 6-7) and San Marin (Win 12-1) again on Saturday.
The toughest match the girls played was the 9:10 am game against Clayton Valley on Saturday morning. Despite our lions’ strenuous efforts against the Clayton Valley Eagles, they did not come out on top. Captain Emily Griesenbeck, ’16, says, “We had a good tournament but that was a game we could have won.” The Clayton Valley Eagles and McClatchy Lions were pretty evenly matched up, but throughout the game, our girl’s team progressively got better; scoring more goals and preventing more goals against us. Emma Calvert, ’16, says that a possible problem with the team was that “we were all very tired.”
However, she added that because “we were able to see the teams we play at sections,” the team gained valuable insight as to how they may place in this very important tournament.
All in all, the girls water polo team may not have won, but the game was still very valuable. Anyone who plays a sport, or participates in any competitive activity, knows that the only way you get better is by playing teams who are about equal in ability. Although losing by so little a margin can often times be more painful than losing by a lot, close games like these are necessary to strengthen the team.