“Defense! Defense!” shouted varsity goalie, Grace Brubaker (‘20) over the sounds of splashing and fighting of girls in the water. This past Wednesday, our varsity girls water polo team faced Bella Vista High School for their first match of the season. Unfortunately, the lady lions faced a staggering loss of 13 to two. What started out as a relatively even match soon took a turn for the worst when Bella Vista consistently dominated and had control of the ball in each quarter. It wasn’t until after Bella Vista’s third goal in the first quarter that junior Adelina Hernandez was able to break through and take a beautiful shot, resulting in our first of two goals.
After a few more successful shots by Bella Vista, the lions scored their second goal by the talented arm of junior Jen Wong. While Varsity ultimately lost, McClatchy fought hard up until the sound of the buzzer, constantly trying to drive up the pool for just one more shot, hoping they’d get lucky.
For the first game of the season, it was a bit unexpected to see our girls take on such a loss, but understandable considering the talent and devotion of Bella Vista. While it was a rough game, hopefully it ignited a flame for revenge against Bella Vista that will lead to a very exciting rematch later on in the season—one that will hopefully end in our favor. All in all, we have a great group of Varsity girls representing our school this year, a group that we should be proud to have donning our cardinal red and white.