Women’s water polo begins season road test with UCSB Invitational

Coming off two overwhelming victories last Saturday, UCLA women’s water polo looks to continue its momentum, while yet again participating in another tournament.

Unlike the UCLA Invitational however, the Bruins will be facing four teams within a two-day period. On Saturday Jan. 24, UCLA will hit the road to face both UC Santa Barbara and Cal Baptist University, followed by Sonoma State and Long Beach State on Sunday Jan. 25.

As the No. 2 Bruins prepare for their first away tournament this season, UCLA assistant coach Molly Cahill said there are benefits of the challenging UCSB Winter Invitational.

“It always a good test to have to play games on the road,” Cahill said. “The majority of our games that we play will be on the road.”

This season, UCLA only has a total of six home games. Additionally, the Bruins will be away for both the UCI and Stanford Invitational.

“It’s an unfortunate standard occurrence,” said coach Brandon Brooks. “We don’t have that many people in our conference anymore and there are plenty of teams that don’t want to come to play us at home for just one game so we do travel a lot. But it’s pretty much like that every year so I think we are used to it.”

Because the Bruins will be facing many teams this season on the road, an early start this weekend will only prepare the team for what is to come as the season progresses.

“It’s really good to get on the road this early in the season and test having to play two games in one day,” Cahill said. “It is always a little tiring so it’s good for the girls. It’s a good challenge that we’re looking forward to.”

The Bruins showed tremendous potential to do well in their upcoming season after last Saturday’s tournament.

“We need to work on everything,” Brooks said. “We are still young in the season and we are figuring out, not too many different roles necessarily, but just people growing, people getting better from year to year, and people getting used to game experience and trying to get everyone to contribute.”

Although the anticipation toward opening weekend is now a thing of the past, the Bruins said the excitement they carried into the first competition of the season has not left the team.

“I’m excited,” said junior attacker Rachel Fattal. “I think one of our goals this season, as in every season, is to improve with every game we play. I think that this weekend from the first game to the second game we played, we really improved. I’m going to say that we are only going to keep improving.”

Fattal who had a total of five goals in Saturday’s tournament said that she is looking forward to the upcoming UCSB Invitational.

“I think we are going to be playing a little bit of stronger teams this weekend which is always more fun and fast paced,” Fattal said. “It’s just good to see where we are as a team. It will be really fun.”

As the season progresses the dynamics of the team are beginning to come full circle.

“We are all fitting into our roles and seeing where everyone fits in,” Fattal said. “These first few weeks are for testing the waters and then we’re just going to go from there. But it looks good.”