Irvington’s Varsity Girls Water Polo ended their season in second place in League and also made it to NCS. Even though they were rebuilding after a lot of seniors left last year, their new team was just as promising and won 6 games in NCS and 4 games in MVALS thanks to their perseverance and hard work. They also won the consolation bracket at the Newark Memorial tournament and won second place at the Santa Teresa tournament, a big accomplishment for Irvington.

At the beginning of the season, the team seemed promising and had a lot of potential.  “Many of our girls play the sport at the club level and continue to practice in the off-season,” said Coach Madrigal, “so we started the season better than we have in years past.” With a new team with new members, the co-captains expected the team to improve both in skill and communication. Despite them losing one of their first games against Santa Teresa, any losses that they suffered only motivated them to improve as a team. One of the standout improvements on the team were Rudra Hariharan, their goalie. While it seemed that she would be a field player, she chose to be a goalie, and through practice and dedication, she was vital for the team. “She’s never played water polo before or anything and she had one of the top stats for the season for goals saved”, says Amber Gobel, one of the co-captains. Jane Zucker, the other co-captain, was also recognized by Coach Madrigal one of the standout improvements; she started off strong as a veteran water polo player, but her responsibility as a senior and co-captain on made her play better during their games, especially at MVALS. In the end, they were able to defeat Santa Teresa during a double overtime game.

As for next year, they hope to get even better and also to beat James Logan at MVALS once and for all. However, this season was better than expected and brought surprises. “We lost against only two of our in-league opponents and we had a respectable record against some really great teams,” says Coach Madrigal. They were able to start off strong and only improve from there. “Honestly, I’m just really proud of everyone and in my four years of playing, no girl’s team from Irvington that I played on has done as well as us, so i’m really proud to have ended my four-year career with them”, says Zucker.