One point separated the Fullerton College Hornets from the Warriors up until two minutes before the game ended this past Friday at 3 p.m.

The Warriors’ last play did not work against Fullerton College.

The men’s water polo team was taken by surprise when the Hornets brought an extra man into the water, causing the Warriors to miss its opportunity to go into overtime. The final score was 6-5, with the Warriors one point behind Fullerton.

“They are traditionally a pretty strong team, so that we had a close game with them bodes well for us. We actually had several opportunities to win the game and we just couldn’t convert them,” Cory Stanbury, coach, said.

Early in the fourth quarter, the Warriors had a penalty throw and the Hornets’ goalie blocked it.

“This is something that should be scored 95 percent of the time,” Stanbury added.

The upcoming games are forcing the players to focus on what needs to be strengthened to beat their upcoming opponents.

“It was a slow start coming back for us, a lot of new players too. We started to pick up the pace around the second and third quarter, but then around fourth, we started to get a bit tired, we just need to practice more and build more endurance,” Ashton Derojas, utility, said.

The team had many chances to take the game and the match between Fullerton could have been won but we just needed to focus, Derojas added.

“For me as a goalie, it’s positioning. Where I am in the goal as opposed to where the field players are. I need to know exactly where I am,” Stephen Sorbom, goalie, said, “We missed a lot of opportunities.”

Sorbom provided the team with 11 saves during the game.

One of the best plays was by Dylan Colbert who scored three goals during the game, Stanbury said.

“We were playing a pretty good team and a good team will mess you up a little. But they only scored 6 goals. Looking around other teams that were playing, their goal production was over 10. We did a good job on the defense,” Stanbury said.

Colbert managed to score three goals for the team, while Adam Rudow and Alec Ortiz comtributed with scoring one goal each for the total of five goals.

“Fullerton frequently gets into the playoffs, so the fact that we had a one point ball game with them straight out of the shoot was a good indicator that we were going to do pretty well,” Stanbury added.

What the men’s water polo team learned from the game on Friday and putting it to use for the rest of the season,

The men’s water polo team are taking its missed opportunities at beating Fullerton and looking at them from a positive perspective.

“We can see some things that we need to work on, opened our eyes to a lot of things, we have a lot of freshmen that are playing that came from a lot of different programs that need to learn how to work together a little bit more. This takes time,” Stanbury said.