A rather fishy pool at York coupled by the loss of their goalie spelled doom last Wednesday for the women’s water polo team in a crushing 15-3 loss to the Yeomen.

The score was a poor reflection of the level of play, with the Blues demoralized by a second quarter injury to their goalie—one of its strongest assets.

“The loss of a goalie sets you off pace,” admitted head coach John Godoy “[Replacement goalie] Kellee tried hard, but we just couldn’t come back.”

And there were more obstacles in the way of the young U of T team. Unlike most regulation pools, the York pool had a shallow end. Although technically it is illegal in waterpolo to touch the pool bottom, the York team had a distinct home-court advantage as they knew how to use the shallow water to their advantage.

“The shallow water really threw us off. We had to change our offense and the way we were checking. It was definitely a contributing factor,” said the U of T assistant coach.

York is ranked first in the league, having won the Ontario Championships four of the past five years, while U of T is still emerging as a team. Rough as the loss was, it was still a major improvement over previous Blues games. In a recent tournament, the Blues won their first games in four years’ water polo competition.

Still, many improvements need to be made in the second half of the season if the team is to fulfil Godoy’s prediction of a playoff berth. Most importantly, the team’s ability to play short-handed will have to be drastically improved—York scored most of their goals on the powerplay.

Team captain and former Junior Canadian National Team member Christi Bardecki, who scored two of the team’s three goals, maintained that her team played all right.

“It was nice to see that we played full-stamina for all four quarters. This is something we haven’t done yet and hopefully we’ll carry this endurance over into January,” she said, adding they need to work on penalty killing.

“We’ve come up with a brand new play but we don’t seem to have it quite down yet.”

This was the team’s last game before the break. They play again on January 11, when the run for the OUA playoffs in February begins in earnest.