This past Saturday, Girls Water Polo had its final game of the season at the NEPSAC Championships, finishing third overall among a competitive field.
Sahana Manikandan ’26 further elaborated on the team’s mentality before the start of each game.
“We had a different plan going in because we were hoping to at least make the final match, since we were qualified. There were two teams, us and [Phillips] Exeter [Academy (Exeter)], who qualified for the place before the tournament had even started, so we had to adjust to the fact that we probably wouldn’t be in the finals, but that was okay. We still had pretty high spirits, and everyone was really focused and paying attention. We did have some injuries from concussions, and recovering from concussions, but overall, we did pretty well,” said Manikandan.
Going into the game, the team experienced difficulties that put them out of position. Although they wanted to win every game, a single loss significantly affected the final result. Madelyn Esposito ’27 detailed the challenges throughout the tournament.
“Our goal was to win all our games. Going in, we know that we are a strong team. We lost our game to Exeter on the Wednesday before the tournament, which set us back a bit because it meant that we dropped our place in the tournament because we then lost a coin toss of who would get the third seed, but then, because we lost to Exeter, we had to coin toss, and we unfortunately lost. So then instead of playing two games, we now had to play in that,” said Esposito.
Helen McNeely ’29 explained how the team specifically prepared for the tournament.
“During the week before practices, we continued to work on things that we’ve been doing most of the season, just making sure we have specific things down, and we also did some fun team bonding activities, like a psyche,” said McNeely.
Overall, the tournament went well for the team despite experiencing some challenges. The team played three games, with two wins and one loss. Manikandan described the team’s performance.
“This weekend was our tournament, so we played a total of three games, since it is also hosted at home. The first one went pretty well. We had mostly expected to win that one, and we did, against Deerfield. The second one was against Choate. We were originally supposed to play Choate in the finals, but due to a coin flip, we had to play them before, and unfortunately, we were not able to win against them, but we were kind of expecting that,” said Manikandan.
Despite having played many games, the team remained positive and played better as a result. Esposito further elaborated on this point.
“We like to stay really positive about it. We knew another game would be more tiring, but we took it really well and stayed positive. That’s another strength of our team, being very adaptable and having a very adaptable mindset,” said Esposito.
Going into next season, McNeely described her excitement going into the next season.
“We’re all excited for next season. We’re sad because we are losing quite a few Seniors, but overall we’re generally excited,” said McNeely.
