Sophomore captain Richelle Miller struggled against the visiting East L.A. College Huskies with all her might as she shook the net with a shot toward the goalie to make it 14-2 for the women’s water polo team.
After a stalled offensive attack from ELAC, Miller swam to the middle of the Huskies’ side of the pool and tossed in a another shot, cutting the lead down to 11 at 14-3.
Two consecutive ELAC points did not dissuade her from trying again, as she threw in a lob over the goalie’s head to make it 16-4.
Miller’s struggle ended in vain as the East L.A. College Huskies (3-13) took down the El Camino Warriors’ women’s water polo team (0-12) on Wednesday, 16-4 at the end of four quarters.
ELAC coach Erik Matheson felt that his team did “pretty well” on set plays and drives, for a new team, and thought Miller’s performance was good.
“(She took) good shots,” Matheson said. “But we were trying a new defender in that position.”
EC coach Corey Stanbury shared some thoughts on Miller and felt her fourth quarter performance was good as well, but thought the overall offense lacked some momentum after scoring the first point of the match.
“Some of her shots were funky,” he said. “But they went in and that’s good. There were portions of the game that were good, but it’s true, (there was a lot of bad passes) and mistakes. It’s something we work on everyday, to pass better.”
Stanbury added that his team needs to work on anticipating what will happen next, otherwise the girls will end up starting their stroke late and get tired needlessly.
Miller talked about her fourth-quarter performance like it was easy, but did include that there are problems with the team.
“I just saw the ball and tried to get it in,” she said. “But we got beat on defense a lot. We need better defense. We have to work on protecting against the counter-attack.”
The women’s water polo team will head to the Citrus Tournament to play East L.A. and L.A. Valley colleges on Friday at 11:20 a.m., and then San Diego Miramar and Santa Monica colleges on Saturday at 10:20 a.m.
