Mt. SAC Women’s Water Polo had a close game on Friday, Sept. 27 against Cuesta College as the first game of the Mountie Classic water polo tournament losing 14-13.

SAC started off the match playing catch-up as Cuesta led the first half of the first quarter 4-1. After restrategizing, they evened the score to 5-5 with 3 consecutive goals in a row.

After the first quarter, both teams played a back-and-forth game with SAC having to respond to constant pressure from Cuesta. SAC played hard, having a strong offense which kept the score neck to neck under pressure.

The game went into double time with SAC fighting hard to find the back of the net to take home the W.

Unfortunately, that was not the case as Cuesta’s goalie was able to defend a few shots on goal. SAC’s offense was a bit too eager to score as they found difficulty taking advantage of opportunities in front of the goal missing key shots that cost them the game.

After the game head coach Chris Jackson explained that he wanted to improve the team as they had a lot of one-pass turnovers.

When it came to some of the missed shots, he expressed the need for patience in front of the goal as they missed some good opportunities.

“It was a good game, we had to battle all the way through to put it into overtime,” Jackson said, “I thought the girls did a really good job […] this is what our team needs to play some tough games.”

Top scorers freshman utility attacker Carolyn Kao (2) and sophomore utility attacker Gianna Gomez (6) discussed the importance of communication and playing more as a team. Although they were confident about their heads-up defense they stressed the importance of playing cohesively and working on passing.

“I think we actually played really well, was not expecting us to be able to be that competitive,” Kao (2) said, “I like our new type of offense we’re running.”

“I think our team did really good; we were communicating a lot and looking for the open player,” Gomez said, “I think we can improve our passing because we had a lot of turnovers.”

SAC performed competitively and is focused on performing better after their rough string of losses over the weekend. Their next game is against Chaffey College at 3 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 9 at home.