IN SPORTS: LODI WATER POLO TEAMS SPLIT GAMES
Flame girls too much for Rams; Lodi boys struggle with St. Mary’s defense
One team rebounded from an unfortunate league-opening loss. Another crumbled under the pressure of overwhelming defense.
It was a mixed bag for Lodi High water polo on Wednesday. The Flames’ girls team defeated St. Mary’s 12-5, and the St. Mary’s boys team routed Lodi 19-3 in Tri-City Athletic League play at Tokay’s swimming pool.
The afternoon started with the girls game, where Hannah Wilson led the Flames with five goals, three of them in the second half. The Rams couldn’t get much going against Lodi’s stiff defense, and the Flames led 5-2 at halftime.
“It’s Lodi-St. Mary’s, they’re always motivated,” Lodi coach Robert Elrod said. “A lot of them go to the same churches as our girls, and we’ve seen them grow up all the way through, so it’s a good competition, but any time you can do that with St. Mary’s, yeah.”
Much of Lodi’s game plan revolved around limiting the damage done by St. Mary’s center Maggie Bria, just two days after a similar center scored seven goals in Lodi’s 11-8 loss to Lincoln.
“We had a game plan that we worked on to, without revealing too much, get the ball out of her hands, because she could light us up,” Elrod said. “The girl from Lincoln lit us up for seven, Maggie could light us up for 20. She’s just that good of a player, so we wanted to minimize that.”
The Flames’ plan worked — Bria was held to one goal. Lodi, meanwhile, spread the scoring around — along with Wilson’s five, Jackie Westerterp scored four, Elisa
Grim scored two and Madison DeCristaro scored one.
Coming out of halftime with a three-goal lead, the Flames scored three unanswered within the first three minutes — Westerterp scored from the right side, DeCristaro found the net, and Wilson drove up the pool on the right side before putting it in the cage.
Lodi (5-4 overall, 1-1 in the TCAL) cruised in the fourth quarter, with a six-goal cushion making the Rams’ two fourth-quarter scores a moot point.
“We distributed the ball really well, a lot of balance, a lot of girls doing their jobs,” Elrod said. “Even maybe some girls that didn’t get on the scoreboard — Lily Kim created space for Hannah on one of her goals, Lizzie (Decko) made some passes to some girls that were in the right spot at the right time. From the whole team, that was something that was delightful to see.”
Boys
In this game, St. Mary’s defense was overwhelming and opportunistic, allowing Matthew Hosmer to score nine goals to lead the rout. The Rams took more than two minutes to score their first goal, but once they got going, the floodgates opened.
St. Mary’s scored two in less than a minute and held a 6-1 lead by the end of the first quarter.
“They’re probably going to win sections, I mean they have that good of a team,” Lodi coach Dan Christie said. “They have a foreign exchange student from Australia, they have a kid who already has a full ride to Pacific and is on the Junior National Team. They’re good. They’re tough to compete with.”
Lodi, meanwhile, has talent but no depth — quite literally. The Flames have no bench, which means no substitutions, and no rest. That helped the Rams go to halftime with a 12-1 lead.
Lodi (6-4, 1-1 in TCAL) got a pair back in the third quarter, with goals by Eli Kim and Benton Peterson adding to Peterson’s first-quarter score for Lodi’s only dent in the scoreboard. For the Rams (8-2, 2-0), Hosmer scored nine, Guy Paulin had five, Carter Knutson had two and Sawyer Alford and Sam Sarantos had one each.
“I think the biggest thing is the guys didn’t quit. They kept working hard, and that’s the biggest thing right now,” Christie said. “They kept their heads up. And like I said, we haven’t had a lot of time to work on plays and things like that, so we’re just hanging. We’ll keep improving.
“It can’t get much worse than that,” he added with a gesture toward the scoreboard.