Panther girls water polo win Valley championship
Porterville wins Valley, head to Regionals
They excitedly counted down the final 10 seconds and then screamed with delight as the final buzzer sounded and made it official.
“We’re Valley champions, bro!,” exclaimed Porterville High School sophomore Karlie Wanmer, as the top-seeded Panthers gathered around and celebrated their 10-7 victory over defending champion, sixthseeded Redwood in the CIF Central Section Division II championship game at the Fresno State Aquatics Center Saturday.
The victory was years in the making for senior captains Shyanne Rainey, Samantha Rainey and Rosemary Chapman. The only four-year varsity players on the team, the trio saw their chances of a Valley title slip away last year in the semifinals, but to come back and finish on top has meant everything to them.
“All four years our goal ... we’ve wanted to come to Valley every single year,” Chapman said. “And last year we got knocked out of it in the semifinals, so to be able to do it this year and have it be our last year is so great. We worked really hard, so it’s like a reassurance that all our hard work was for something and not a waste.”
Assisting the team this season was former Porterville head coach Richard Taylor. In his 23 years at the helm of the girls water polo program, Taylor led the team to 13 East Yosemite League championships, five Valley finals and two Valley championships. Taylor coached the Rainey sisters and Chapman in his final water polo seasons, and was beaming with pride after the victory.
“I am so proud of them,” Taylor said. “This is what they’ve been working for. I mean even when they were freshmen and they were playing varsity, they were working for a CIF championship. I’m just so tickled that they just kept up the hard work. I am so impressed with Evan, he did a terrific job and the girls worked hard. They had plenty of supporting members, but Rose Chapman, Shyanne Rainey and Samantha Rainey, all of them have been working since they were nine, 10 years old with me. So I’m just tickled.”
Throughout the season the
captains have lived up to their leadership roles, and the Valley championship game was no different. When the Eylchampion Panthers (255, 8-0 EYL) started the game off down 2-0, all three came through to right the ship and lead the team to the program’s first Valley title since they went back-toback as section champions in 2005 and 2006.
“Night in and night out, it doesn’t matter which one it is, one of them steps up for us,” PHS head coach Evan Thomas said. “Tonight, I thought they all played well. After that, getting down 2-0, I had to change up our defensive strategy a little bit, and Rose was put on one of their top scorers and Shyanne the other one. It took them out of the offensive side for a second until they figured out how to play defense and go score on our offense too, but I thought our defense was superb tonight. It was really good.”
In the beginning, Porterville couldn’t get the ball in to Shyanne Rainey at 2-meters or capitalize on man-up situations, but in the final two minutes of the first quarter, junior Johanna Scheer and Chapman scored to tie the game at 2-all before the close of the quarter.
From then on, everything seemed to click for the Panthers.
Once again it started with Scheer, as she scored on a skip shot from about 7-meters, followed up by Chapman scoring and Shyanne Rainey scoring on an assist from Scheer after Porterville allowed Redwood (21-12) a goal. The Rangers scored again before halftime, but it was answered with a lob from Chapman to finish the half up 6-4.
“We knew that they were going to come out strong,” Chapman said. “We knew that they were going to want to win just as badly as we did. At first we got a little frazzled when they came up by two, but we knew that if we kept playing, we changed our defense up a little bit, started pressing, started communicating a little better – it’s really loud in the stands around us, so we had to focus and really listen to each other and not everyone around us. And once we did that and we started playing together, working together, it all started to flow and we started scoring and it was better.”
In the cage, goalkeeper Samantha Rainey was unbelievable, getting save after save to finish with 12 blocks – eight in the first half alone – along with one steal and one assist, for what she believes was her best performance of the season.
“(I was) nervous but I surprised myself with how many blocks I got,” Samantha Rainey said. “And I feel like that was (one of) my best games and I went out with my best game, and that’s what I wanted to do.”
Chapman – who finished with five goals, two steals and one assist – started the third quarter off with two goals in nearly two minutes, and Porterville began to pull away from Redwood. Shyanne Rainey also scored in the third while the Panthers held the Rangers scoreless for the first time.
Redwood scored three goals in the final quarter, while Porterville used the clock and held onto their lead. Shyanne Rainey scored her third and final goal of the game in the fourth for the Panthers’ final goal of the game.
“It’s been awesome,” Thomas, who is in his first year as head coach, said. “I am blessed to have come into such a strong group of girls. Of course it took practice and it took hard work from them and from me, but they have been doing that already without me before this year. So that was awesome, that’s lucky on my part. But the great thing was that they worked hard all season, even yesterday’s practice. They were there and focused and ready to do whatever I told them. That’s been really awesome this year.”
Scheer finished with two goals, two steals and one assist, while freshman Claire Lee had two assists and one steal. Wanmer had two steals, junior Emily Herrera had one assist and junior Alyssa Bodoh finished with three steals and two assists.
The season continues for Porterville as they begin play in the CIF Norcal Regional championship tournament this week. Thomas said playing on the big stage of a Valley final has the team prepared for the next round and that they’re all hoping for a home game to start.
“We’re hoping we get a home game and we put on a good showing and hopefully win and move on to the semifinals of the regional tournament,” Thomas said. “That’d be sweet. Today was big for that, it helped us get ready. Not so much the (opposing) team — teams come and go — but the atmosphere, us getting ready to play in a crucial game.”