The women’s club water polo team won its conference for the second time in three years. Following a 11-5 victory against top-ranked Yale last Saturday and a 9-5 win over Boston University in Sunday’s North Atlantic Regional championship game, the women will travel to the national championship tournament, held in Geneva, Ohio.
The women’s success this year is especially significant as it follows a rebuilding effort last year. Following a conference championship in 2012, the Polar Bears struggled to perform in 2013 after two new teams—Yale and B.U.—joined their conference.
“At the beginning of the year, we were kind of looking at this as a rebuilding year,” said Theresa Faller ’15. “Most of our team had never played water polo before and didn’t know the rules.”
“Our goal was to make it to the top half,” said Head Coach Spencer Vespole ’13. “We expected to do better than last year, but we didn’t expect to win [the conference] until we beat Yale last Saturday.”
The team’s prospects changed following the arrival of several new players.
“A lot of the swim team girls decided to join this year and that made a big difference, but we also got a lot of girls who aren’t involved in the swim team...and they contributed a lot,” said Faller.
Vespole said the team is enormously athletic.
“We have a few really good players,” he said. “Patty Boyer [’15] and Lela Garner [’16], I think, are the two best players in the conference. We have a lot of really inexperienced players who have improved from one tournament to the next.”
The Bowdoin women practice in bigger pools than their opponents, which may have helped them over the weekend.
“The fact that we have so many swimmers on our team just gives us a big advantage,” said Faller. “It might have been a fluke, maybe [Yale was] tired, but we also played really well.”
The end of the season included “some of the best games that we’ve ever played,” Faller said.
Despite the success it has achieved so far, the team is ambivalent about its prospects at nationals, where it will compete against other conference champions.
“A lot of the other teams practice year round,” said Faller. “We can’t because of the swim season and other sports.”
Vespole said that going to nationals will be a learning experience.
“We’ve won two conference championships in the last three years, but we haven’t really won much else past that,” he explained.
Vespole also noted that the women still have areas for improvement. He cited ball handling as the squad’s primary weakness.
“We’ve won a lot of games based on athleticism and defense,” Vespole said. “A few players really carried us….Next year [the team] needs to work on depth.”
However, given this year’s success, and with the entire lineup returning next year, the Polar Bears are poised for another conference championship.
“Next year, we will be pretty heavy favorites,” said Vespole.