Boys’ Water Polo defeats Cupertino 16-6

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Justin Su

Both teams scramble for the ball. The Eagles defeated Cupertino 16-6.

by Justin Su, Sports Editor

Varsity Boys Water Polo defeated Cupertino High School today 16-6 at the Singh Aquatics Center 4:30 pm yesterday, bringing their overall record to 14-4.

“The score makes it seem like we came out and dominated, but we didn’t really do some things as well as we could have. There were definitely areas that we could have played better, namely our defense,” team captain Arnav Tandon (12) said. “Obviously, I’m proud of the effort and our offense was pretty top notch.”

The boys scored six goals in the first quarter, two goals in the second quarter, five goals in the third quarter and three goals in the final quarter. Arnav scored five goals throughout the match and Matthew Hajjar (10) and Arben Gutierrez-Bujari (12) each scored three goals.

Senior water polo player Arben had similar thoughts on how the team played.

“Our shots were on point today, every shot we took basically went in,” Arben said. “We have a lot of things to work on, we kind of stooped down to their level rather than keeping up at our level, so next time we definitely need to play a little better, but it was a good game overall.”

The Cupertino Pioneers scored three goals during the second quarter and another three during the fourth quarter. Harker head coach Ted Ujifusa talked about what gave Harker the edge over Cupertino.

We were probably better prepared than the other team in that a lot of kids played [all] summer long, so we’ve basically become a year round program,” he said.  

The team now prepares to face off against Milpitas High School on Thursday at an away game.