WATER POLO GU 13th at National Tourney By Meredith McCloskey Hoya Staff Writer
The Georgetown club water polo team paved the way for the future of its program this weekend, winning its first competition at the national level and finishing 13th overall at the club national championships.
The Hoyas entered the weekend as the eighth seed, matched up against ninth-seeded Dartmouth. Head Coach Sam Bakhshandehpour was informed before the game of disparity between the two teams’ experience. While Georgetown’s squad has been in existence for seven years, it receives minimal funding from the university and pays for pool time twice a week in Virginia. The Dartmouth team has two head coaches, receives funding from their university, practices eight times a week at their pool and has 75 years of tradition behind it. Despite this gap, Georgetown remained confident as the team pulled out to a 2-1 lead at the half. However, Dartmouth’s experience prevailed in the second half as they pulled away to an 8-3 win.
In the second game of the day, Georgetown played against first-seed Purdue, who was edged out by Georgia Tech 9-8 earlier in the competition. After a slow start, falling behind 10-1 in the first two quarters, Georgetown dug deep to outscore Purdue 2-1 in the third, and held them to only two goals in the final quarter before dropping 13-4 to the Boilermakers.
“Given two more quarters, we would have beaten Purdue,” Bakhshandehpour said. “We had coaches from other teams coming up to me and congratulating me even though we lost our first two games. They have seen us in the top 20 over the past four years. Now they know Georgetown water polo is for real.”
Saturday, Georgetown faced Texas A&M, who also suffered two losses the day before to Villanova, who lost to Cal Poly in the championship game and the U.S. Military Academy. After trading the early lead with the Aggies, senior Lee Conant’s seven goals helped the Hoyas persevere to a 10-8 victory, tying them for 13th place overall with Dayton.
“It was the sweetest win of the year because it was at the national level,” Bakhshandehpour said. “And it made our guys hungry to get back to that level next year and even take it a step further. We proved to ourselves that we can compete at the national level and that our success over the past four years was not a fluke.”
This week the Atlantic Division All-Conference awards were announced. Conant and senior co-captain Eiki Hatakeyama were named to the first team, while juniors Evan Behr, Rich Storey and co-captain Marshall Spooner received second team honors. Bakhshandehpour was also named coach of the year for the second-straight season.
Georgetown’s success this fall, including placing first in its division and qualifying for nationals, will give the Hoyas several options to compete at invite-only tournaments in the spring. The squad also plans to compete in several local scrimmages against teams such as Navy, Maryland and George Washington.
