JV water polo entered with confidence in their rivalry matchup against the Hillsdale Knights. On Oct. 12, the Scots outlasted their opponent winning the game 10-6 scoring 5 goals in the final period.
In the first quarter, the Scots came out firing scoring the first two goals both by sophomore center Tyler Rachal.
“The middle is where everything converges and if you leave the middle open that is like leaving the goal open,” said Rachal.
Rachal went on to score four more goals that proved to be the deciding factor in the game. He showed his leadership on offense and held down the center on defense.
The team relied on their coach Jim Mcdowell to lead them from the side and overcome the absence of their starting goalie, Nathan Zamecki.
“The gift that our team possesses is that we have athletic boys who can play multiple positions and of course in water polo you need to be able to do that, and that’s been our strength all year,” said Mcdowell.
With the combination of strong play in the middle along with great conditioning, the Scots held the Knights to only six goals. It was prevalent that the endurance of the Scots was greater than Hillsdale’s. The Scots ended up outscoring the Knights 3-1 in the fourth quarter.
“We emphasize endurance and strength training and we began that with some really long swim sets and training in early August it is paying off for us now when we’re in some very pressure cooker type games in the end,” said Mcdowell.
The team played as one unit and it’s chemistry stemmed from the leadership of sophomore co-captain Denton Silfvast.
“We definitely work really well together, we do a really good job of moving and finding the open man. Everyone is communicating a lot on defense,” said Silfvast.
As the season comes to a close the whole team has high expectations for the future of Carlmont water polo.
“The boys love to play.” Mcdowell simply puts it.
