By Hannah Proctor
Staff Writer
The Mira Costa girls water polo team hosted Peninsula High School on Jan. 18. The girls won their second consecutive league game to remain undefeated in the Bay League, improving their overall record to 9-3 and their league record to 2-0.
“We played strong defense today,” senior co-captain Natalie Lavinsky said. “We shut down their best player and kept her from shooting inside.”
Costa’s offense and defense, worked well in the Mustangs 15-6 win over Peninsula as senior goalie Bianca Magna made save after save keeping the score low.
“Peninsula’s top threat proved to be our biggest challenge,” Lavinsky said. “We kept getting called fouls against her, so she got a couple free shots.”
Peninsula came into the game believing they could hold Costa on offense and play better defense. This approach was effective in the first half of the game, but proved to be very difficult to uphold by the second half.
“We played a good, fast, strong team,” Peninsula coach Albert Garcia said. “We tried to slow them down, limit easy goals, but we didn’t do a good job on that. The game plan fell apart in the second half.”
Costa’s water polo team has developed this reputation of being “good, fast, and strong” through hard work during practice. The team and coaching staff recognize consistent weaknesses and work on those points in order to improve. Although the team has not yet fine-tuned every aspect that needs to be enhanced, it has bettered itself with each game.
With 15 goals in this game, Costa’s offense has improved significantly since the beginning of the season. Lavinsky scored five of those goals, followed by junior Emily Milstead and sophomore Jordan Raney with three each, and junior Sarah Crist, Madison King and seniors Taryn Kamimoto and Courtney Duong with one goal a piece.
“Defense keeps getting better and better each game, and offense is getting there, we just need to take smarter shots,” Mira Costa coach Jon Reichardt said.
The Mustangs will play tomorrow, Jan. 21, in Coronado with time to be announced before playing Redondo Union High on Jan 23. at home.
Leave a Reply