The San Diego State women’s water polo team had the mindset tosucceed at the UCSD Mini Tourney Sunday. They did just that.
SDSU defeated Princeton and UCSD, improving their overall recordto 12-8.
In the morning win against Princeton (9-6), sophomore HollyHartzell and junior Casey Finnegan led the Aztecs with two goalseach.
The score was tied at two after the first quarter, but the Aztecstook the lead after the half (5-3) and continued to lead through thesecond half.
“We’ve been working a lot on our outside shooting,” Hartzell said.”We played well together and a lot of players stepped up in thisgame.”
Five other players added to the Aztecs’ offense, each scoring agoal. Goalie Heather Stiles netted eight saves in the goal againstthe Tigers.
“Our team was confident this entire weekend,” Prestegard said.”We’ve been practicing on executing our offense. We know other teamsare going to try to take Holly out of the offense, so we really havebeen working on attacking the goal.”
In the later game against UCSD (5-4), Delgado scored thegame-winning goal in the fourth quarter to give the Aztecs theirsecond win. SDSU led at the half by a point (3-2), but the Tritonsevened the score at four in the fourth before the freshman scored thetie-breaking goal.
Hartzell and Prestegard scored two goals each and Stiles recorded10 saves for the Aztecs.
“We play a lot of games against UCSD and we know a lot of theirplayers,” Hartzell said. “It’s always great to beat your cross townrivals.”
The Aztecs played against the Tritons earlier this season. Thescore was the same but the Aztecs were at the losing end.
“We played UCSD in the beginning of the season and that game was abuilding and learning experience and showed us where we were as ateam,” Prestegard said. “This time we played our game and didn’t getcaught up in theirs.”
The weekend wasn’t all success for SDSU, evident by their gameFriday The Aztecs lost to second-ranked UCLA 12-5 at Bud Kearns Pool.The loss dropped the Aztecs to 3-3 in the Mountain Pacific SportsFederation.
The Bruins were in control the entire first half, leading 4-0 atthe end of the first quarter. Hartzell scored a goal late in thesecond quarter to end the half at 8-1. UCLA continued to dominate,adding three more goals in the third.
The Aztecs’ offense came to life in the fourth quarter, scoringfour points, while the defense allowed only one UCLA goal.
“We didn’t give up and kept coming hard at this team,” coach CarinCrawford said. “We had a better second half and we were a lot moreaggressive on shooting.”
The Aztecs only had four shot attempts in the first half, butended the game with 21.
“Even though we didn’t have so many defensive stops, I thought wewere still communicating well,” Crawford said. “We had good awarenessand we didn’t come out flat.”
Prestegard and Delgado were the leading scorers for the Aztecs,scoring two goals each. Stiles had six saves in net for the Aztecs.
The Aztecs return home to host Cal State Northridge Thursday at 4p.m. at Bud Kearns Pool in Balboa Park.
