The Palo Alto girls’ water polo team (4-2, 2-0 in league), cruised to an easy 13-5 win over visiting Homestead High School on Thursday.
Taking a commanding 5-0 lead in the first quarter, the Vikings didn’t look back on their way to their second Santa Clara Valley Athletic League victory. Relying on a hard press defense to force bad passes and to spark its counter attack, Palo Alto harassed Homestead from the start to the end of the game.
Head coach Cory Olcott was pleased with the team’s defensive effort.
“The team played well, especially on defense,” Olcott said. “We use our defense to set up our offense, and the press helped us counter out and create goal opportunities. We work on getting the lead breaks to really push the counter, getting them to the goal as quickly as possible. This creates mismatch and isolation opportunities.”
Junior Haley Conner broke out for two counter goals early in the first quarter, while junior Rachel Harrus and seniors Malaika Drebin and Ali Shorin contributed a goal to set up the Vikings with an early advantage.
A strong Palo Alto defense prevented Homestead from making any of their six-on-five man advantages and the Mustangs only broke into the scoring column late into the second quarter. However, the Vikings’ offense lagged in the second, with only one goal. Sophomore Skylar Dorosin, who scored three goals, saw this as a result of complacency.
“When we started winning, we got lazy,” Dorosin said.
The Vikings continued their impressive display of firepower in the third quarter, with Shorin and Dorosin contributing two goals apiece while senior Shameem Jamil added one. With the scoring spread out among so many players, Olcott stressed the importance of team effort.
“The beauty of this team is that everyone contributes,” Olcott said. “Winning for us is a matter of executing and sweating the details, so while one person gets credit for scoring a goal, it’s the teamwork — all the players knowing what to do and doing it — that get us to success. Literally every player is a key part of the whole.”
Paly’s defense continued to frustrate Homestead late in the game. The Mustangs were plagued by turnovers that led to power play opportunities for the Vikings, who had junior Anna Glaves convert one on the post for the last goal of the game.
Senior goalie June Afshar had a strong performance in the cage, blocking several Homestead shots and even turning away a 5-meter penalty before being replaced in the fourth quarter.
Despite the blowout nature of the game, Drebin felt like it was a good experience for the team.
“We are starting to be more aware,” Drebin said. “We are working on our power play offense and defense and we are feeling pretty confident about our next game. We have definitely seen the potential the team has.”
The Vikings have the weekend to prepare for Tuesday’s showdown with league rival Los Altos High School, to whom they lost in last season’s SCVAL finals.
“The team is definitely heading in the right direction for the Los Altos game,” Olcott said. “We are adding a few plays and trying to smooth out our six on five, and we saw some of that today. The most important thing that I see is intensity from the outset of every game. The players are all focused and playing hard while still having fun.”
The Vikings’ next game is at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 22, at Los Altos.
Editor’s note: The original version of the story identified Anna Glaves as a sophomore. Glaves is a junior. The current version of the story reflects this change.