Academic obligations prevented key players from attending the Fullerton men’s water polo tournament held on Sept. 25-26.
“We were missing a few essential players, such as our goalie” said head coach Corey Stanbury.
Goalkeeper David Olson was forced to miss the games on Friday versus Southwestern and Fullerton due to having to attend class Stanbury said.
Without the usual goalie the team was obviously lacking and it showed with a 14-20 loss the first game and a 6-19 loss the second.
“With the first game (against Southwestern) we had a pretty good chance, we can beat Southwestern” Stanbury said, but without the whole team playing the loss was hard.
Even with Olson absent on Friday, player Jose Bahena stepped up and had ten saves against Southwestern and four against Fullerton.
“We weren’t quite ready to go” Stanbury said, in regard to the games on Friday.
The team had already faced a 10-14 loss against Cerritos College only a few days before and fatigue from that game may have contributed to a bad first day of the tournament.
Competition was also fierce on Friday with Stanbury calling Fullerton a “really really good” team and one that they put up a hard defense against.
On Saturday the Warriors were back with the full team and showed their strength with a 19-9 win against Santa Monica and a 15-4 win against Miramar.
“The last two teams were a bit weaker” said Reva Vahabnezhad, 18.
Even if EC was stronger competition they no doubt had to play hard but were also given a chance to play almost all of the players on the team.
“Over the second day we got to pretty much play every player and get them out there” Stanbury said.
In the game against Santa Monica freshman player Arpad Toldi scored nine goals and had five assists and fellow freshman Madison Hedgecock scored three goals, thus showing the depth of the men’s team this season.
“The second games were much better and stronger for us” said Jose Bahena, 19.
The EC men also showed strong defense against Santa Monica with the majority of players making steals in their quest to gain control of the ball. Offensively Stanbury believes the team was strong throughout the weekend, and it was the other factors that led to the dismal first day and not a lack of heart.
“We put in work” Stanbury said about the weekend as a whole.
The last game of the tournament was the men’s defeat of Miramar where Stanbury believes Jeff Craver and Javier Molina stood out as some of the strongest.
“They (Craver and Molina) just had really good games” Stanbury said, with Molina scoring seven goals against Miramar.
The weekend was long for the team but even in defeat they are proud and had good numbers and good defense said Bahena.
Next up for the men’s water polo team is an away game against L.A. Trade Tech, a team that they won by a landslide in the two games they played against them last year.
The men’s game is scheduled for Oct. 7 at 3p.m.