Dick Oglesby
For The New Era
The Sweet Home water polo teams had a busy three days, last week playing three straight games with the girls winning one, while the boys and the boys losing all three.
Against Corvallis on Oct. 2, the Huskies played a mixed team so they technically won both games, but not on the scoreboard, Coach Craig Martin said.
Corvallis beat the boys 12-4 and the girls 13-2.
On Oct. 3, against powerful South Albany, the boys lost 13-7, while the girls fell 18-8.
On Saturday, Oct. 4, Sweet Home hosted Woodburn, which did not have enough players on its girls squad, so Martin allowed two of his players to play with Woodburn, which allowed them to have a game.
Sweet Home won 19-16 in the girls match, while the boys fell 16-6.
The Husky boys, who barely have enough players to put a team in the water, are continuing to improve in their fundamentals – passing, shooting, awareness, and aggressive play that forces passing and shooting errors. Sweet Home is also getting back on defense much faster and guarding the opponents on their own end of the pool.
“The boys have improved dramatically,” Wilson said. “They are still a little frustrated because when you look at the scoreboard, they still haven’t won.
“But they’ve played really well against good teams.”
He noted that Sweet Home’s boys were up 7-1 against South Albany in the first quarter of that match before they ran out of gas.
“For the guys, it’s kind of hard when they’re getting beat by teams who have more swimmers than we do,” Martin said.
For the girls, Laura Gourley had a good week, scoring 17 goals total, with seven assists, Sami Webb had eight goals with three assists, Katie Kinney had six goals and three assists, Norajean Lemar had two goals and five assists, and Niccole Simmonds had two goals and one assist.
The girls are doing “fine,” Martin said, noting that the Huskies were “really close” in a couple of their recent games. “They’ve improved quite a bit.”
The challenge for Sweet Home, he said, is to play four quarters as well as they typically play the first one and the last one.
“They struggle in the second and third quarters, then play well in the fourth,” he said. “We’re very capable of playing these teams.”