Women’s water polo maintains win streak at UCSB Winter Invitational

On a two-day, four-game stretch, exhaustion begins to set in and an athlete’s homesickness surfaces. However, whether a team is at home or on the road, the season progresses, and the team has to face the challenges that they’re presented with. In doing so, team dynamics begin to emerge, players begin to understand what their roles are and the mechanics of the team begin to look like a well-oiled machine.

Throughout the three-day UC Santa Barbara Winter Invitational, UCLA demonstrated its ability to play cohesively as a team. This past weekend, the Bruins were able to add four more wins to their perfect record to bring them to 6-0. With two overwhelming victories on Saturday against No. 14 UCSB and Cal Baptist University as well as additional wins on Sunday against Sonoma State University and Cal State Long Beach, the Bruins capped off their road tournament in a dominating fashion.

Facing UCSB, the Bruins were able to emerge with a victory with the help of both senior attacker Emily Donohoe and junior attacker Rachel Fattal, who scored four goals each. With strong defense in the cage, redshirt senior goalkeeper Sami Hill held the Gauchos to single-digit scoring and became UCLA’s all-time saves leader. Hill finished the day with a total of 747 career saves.

“I actually did not know that I was close until one of our parents came up to me last night and was like, ‘Did you break it?’ and I was like, ‘Break what?’” Hill said. “But I had no idea, and then when I found out and I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so rad.’ It was pretty cool to be a part of the history I feel. I’m excited.”

Though Hill did not know at the time that she had just set a record, the success of her record will stay with her forever.

“I’m extremely proud of her and the growth she has had over the years. She is at a school that has had so much success and so many outstanding goalies. She has carried that torch fantastically,” said coach Brandon Brooks.

The team this weekend had a total of 71 goals within the three-day tournament and kept all four teams in the single-digit scoring range.

“I think that our team was able to do what we needed to do in order to set up different situations,” Donohoe said. “Our team was able to develop certain things. I just saw that my job for that was to finish my goals, so I was happy I was able to do that and contribute to our win.”

The Bruins are averaging 18 goals throughout their games and continue to show strong offense.

“I know that these games are just a couple of games where we can work together,” Donohoe said. “Victories are always what we want to work for. They are more opportunities for us to grow together as a team and continue to learn how to play together and show us what we need to work on in the future.”

Brooks said he believes that his team is growing – however, it is important for his players to hold onto their momentum as they go further into the season and play more difficult teams.

“I thought that we showed growth, and I thought we did a really good job working toward our goals,” Brooks said. “I don’t think that we should be too high, and I don’t think we should be too low. They should be confident – we have a good team, and we are playing well so far, but the tests continue to get harder and harder and we have to rise to the challenge.”