Boys’ water polo: Falcons close out season as third-place team

The third-seeded Falcons got fifth place in the SCVAL Championship during the week of Oct. 21 after a 15-5 victory over the Santa Clara Bruins.

Following a disappointing loss against Fremont 9-8 at the league tournament, the Falcons came back strong against Milpitas, dominating with a 11-3 victory. Senior Christopher Metz, the Falcons’ goalie, played a field position for the first time since his freshman year, with deep wing senior David Nguyen as his replacement because the Falcons were so ahead.

“The Fremont game was one that we should have won,” senior captain Grant Guzzo said. “Our chemistry that we had against them in previous games just wasn’t there.”

As a lower-division team, the Falcons needed to win the El Camino League to qualify for CCS and fell short.

On Oct. 21 and 22, the Falcons attended the Ronald J. Freeman Memorial tournament hosted at Monta Vista High School. In their first match, the boys had a disappointing 15-2 loss against rival Harker.

Following the Harker game, the Falcons lost to Willow Glen 11-8, a score the team was satisfied with because the Rams are a higher ranked team. In the final game of the tournament, the boys lost to Monta Vista 8-5.

“We did pretty well at the tournament, considering that we were only three goals behind Willow Glen and Monta Vista, which are both teams in the upper league,” senior hole-defense David Nguyen said.

A few days before on Oct. 18, the five seniors — Nguyen, Metz, utility William Lew, Guzzo and hole-set Armin Agha-Ebrahim — celebrated their Senior Day game against Santa Clara with roses and speeches, prepared by the juniors of the team.

“Seeing all the people there to support us made me feel proud to be a water polo player,” Nguyen said.

The Falcons had a rocky start to the game, managing a 3-3 score at the end of the first half.

“When we hit the half, the stress of this being my last home game hit me personally,” Agha-Ebrahim said. “We all realized it then, and it blew us up with intensity. After that we started scoring back to back goals.”

Agha-Ebrahim, who was fired up by the overwhelming crowd, led the team with four goals. Nguyen and Guzzo rocketed in two goals each, while the crowd continued shouting “you can’t guard them.”

The team ended up winning 10-4, a significantly better score than the team’s first matchup against Santa Clara, which ended with a narrow 7-6 Falcon win.

“Santa Clara wasn’t going to come to our house and make us look like fools,” Agha-Ebrahim said.

The Falcons’ win over Santa Clara finalized their record at 8-4, placing them at the third place spot in the El Camino League.

Lew believes that the team’s juniors and sophomores improved drastically throughout the season.

“The first time we played Santa Clara, our coach took out all the seniors and only put in the juniors and sophomores, which led to a close one point win,” Lew said. “In the final game we played against Santa Clara, our coach did the same thing, but this time we just kept scoring.”