The A&M Women’s Club Water Polo B-Team finished its first and only home tournament with two wins and two losses on March 25-26 at the Student Rec Center.
Now 2-6 in the spring season, the B-Team started Day 1 strong with a 10-6 win against Rice University followed by a 3-9 loss to the University of Texas. They began Day 2 with an 11-7 win against the University of North Texas, but after a hard-fought battle to the finish, fell 8-9 against Baylor University. With 47 members split between the club’s A and B-teams, both squads will next compete in the conference tournament at Rice in April.
On the final day of the tournament the B-team only had a one-game break between the last two games. The team initiated a strong start in the nail-biting game against Baylor leading 4-2 in the first quarter. The teams continued to go point-for-point until the final seconds of the fourth quarter when Baylor scored the go-ahead point with just four seconds left on the clock.
Winless coming into the home tournament, team members noted they had focused on conditioning, training and scrimmage practices in the run-up, allied health freshman Michelle Parsons said.
“I think we all had a slight amount of disappointment, but nothing compared to the proudness we felt for the fight we put up,” Parsons said.
Tournament results will affect how the team prepares for the conference tournament in April, Parsons said.
“The biggest challenge we overcame [in] this tournament was our own minds,” Parsons said. “Not letting the result from the last games get to us, we were able to still play our best, which resulted in some hard-fought wins.”
This tournament was the first time the team had to play seven-minute quarters this season, biotechnology graduate student Sydney Vu said.
“I think our biggest challenge was trying to keep the intensity up for both games today,” Vu said. “It started to get pretty difficult to power through each quarter.”
With limited time left in the season both players agreed the team had grown in many aspects, team coach Alexander McQueen always encourages players to see growth rather than dwell on mistakes.
“[Coach] always emphasizes our strengths and what we did well after every game, and then touches on what we need to work on as well as his plan for it so we have something to look forward to improve on!” Parsons said.
The conference tournament is scheduled for April 21-22 at Rice.
Visit AggieWWP.wixsite.com or follow the team @AggieWWP on Instagram. To watch the team live, subscribe to their YouTube channel.
Sara Wood is a recreation, parks and tourism sciences senior and contributed this article from the course JOUR 359, Reporting Sports, to The Battalion.