Girls varsity water polo team wins their first game of the season against Hercules High School

By Jetsun Jungney and Melia Oliver

The Albany High School varsity girls water polo team won their first game of the season—and ever—on September 19th.

At the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, AHS formed their first women’s water polo team. According to current varsity captain Cricket Baldwin, the team started out with “no clue what to do.”

Now, a year later, the team has improved significantly, thanks to returning players with experience and the motivation to improve. The head coach, Jesus Salcedo said that the experience has made all the difference.

“I think that’s a huge dynamic that’s happening this year that a lot of the other players are helping the newcomers on the team.”

In addition, the rise in the number of players this year has prompted the formation of two teams: junior varsity and varsity. “It is nice to have a varsity team that knows a bit more what [we] are doing,” Baldwin said. “We are practicing with people who are a bit more advanced.”

This practice paid off when the team won their game against Hercules High with a score of 13-7. Baldwin said that the team went into the game hoping to improve from last year.

“We all went in like ‘oh we lost our first game to Hercules last year 21 to 3, let’s just try to not have that big of a loss.’”

On the other hand, Salcedo expressed more optimism.

“Having the knowledge base and how our workouts had been prior to the game—I think we felt very confident in our ability to hold our own.”

Both people, however, did not express any expectations to win.

It was during the second half of the game that the team's hard work at practice was able to pay off.

“That nine [points] scored in the 3rd quarter was because of our endurance and speed,” Salcedo said.

After AHS had taken the win, Baldwin recalled that the opponent’s coach and referees expressed that they were “really surprised as to how much we had improved.”

Reflecting on the game, Baldwin said, “We were all just super proud of ourselves—proud of all of our players. It was a really good start to our season.”