Women’s water polo overcomes LMU and breezes past Fresno State in doubleheader
Senior defender Rachel Whitelegge found the back of the cage twice in the fourth quarter for No. 3 UCLA women’s water polo to outlast No. 15 Loyola Marymount. (Emily Ng/Daily Bruin)
By Marcus Veal
Feb. 3, 2019 12:33 p.m.
The Bruins played two games, but battled a third opponent: the weather.
No. 3 UCLA women’s water polo (10-0) picked up two more wins over No. 15 Loyola Marymount (2-2) 9-8 and No. 14 Fresno State (2-8) 11-6 on a rainy and windy Saturday morning.
The Bruins barely escaped past the Lions in the first win of the day.
“We really deserved to lose that game,” said coach Adam Wright. “Maybe that’s what it’s going to take and like I said to the team after, maybe we have to learn the hard way. Until we learn to understand how important being consistent is in our everyday approach, it’s always going to be a step backward.”
The Lions jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, with the Bruins only scoring shortly before the end of the first quarter with a goal from senior center Sarah Sheldon. In the second, all four goals scored happened on the power play. UCLA scored three of them to knot the score at four-all at the half.
LMU had the lead at 8-6 with a little less than five minutes in the game, but allowed two unanswered goals by senior defenders Rachel Whitelegge and Kelsey Blacker for UCLA to tie it going into the final three minutes.
Whitelegge had two power play goals in the fourth quarter.
“Something we’ve been really trying to put emphasis on after last weekend was working on our 6-on-5,” Whitelegge said. “For me, a personal goal was to try and work my movement as much as I could and just try to get a better line of sight with my teammates for open balls.”
With less than one minute left in the game, UCLA got a steal when LMU was trying to respond to two unanswered goals it gave up. Sophomore goalkeeper Jahmea Bent surveyed the field and saw a wide open junior attacker Bronte Halligan to throw to. Still unguarded, Halligan filled the lane to be one-on-one with LMU goalkeeper Elizabeth Bradley and drilled what would be the difference-making goal with 35 seconds left on the clock.
Bent got the start in the cage and recorded nine saves while giving up eight goals. She said the weather conditions made the games a little harder but the team did their best to try and not let it affect them.
“It was definitely a challenge,” Bent said. “Luckily it’s been raining a lot recently, but still a challenge to get over how cold and rainy it was, but we had to fight through it and we did.”
The second game of the doubleheader featured junior attacker Maddie Musselman matching her career high in goals, as well as a season high in saves for senior goalkeeper Carlee Kapana.
Musselman piled up five goals for the second game in a row and for the sixth time in her career. Kapana tallied 12 saves, half of which were in the first quarter alone.
Fresno State only had the lead for three minutes and 19 seconds.
The Bulldogs had the first goal of the game from sophomore Sydney Coachman, but the Bruins responded with three goals of their own from Musselman and freshman attackers Bella Baia and Val Ayala.
Fresno State was able to pull the game within one goal two different times in the third quarter, but four unanswered goals by UCLA were enough to prevent a potential comeback.
Wright said the team will take these wins from the weekend, but their work is clearly cut out for them.
“Last night (against No. 5 Hawai’i) was a very positive step and then today was 10 back,” Wright said. “We know that we’re going to see everyone’s best game and the reality is that we didn’t do a good job of being ready today.”
