Huskies Dominant First Half Leads to Win, Program's First-Ever Three-Game Win Streak

by Cerwin D Haynes

(photos by Mario Villegas)

In comparison to the other currently active South Coast Conference prgrams, East LA College women's water polo is relatively young, with 2013 being the program's inaugural season. Since that first season, ELAC had never won more than two straight games as the sport has languished in the shadows of the conference's more prominent teams.

Thankfully, the Pack broke through today with their first ever three-game win streak in program history. Hannah Belt and Alina Perez scored three goals apiece to lead a balanced Huskies' attack to defeat the Cerritos College Falcons 14-10. More importantly is that these three wins have been against conference opponents, improving East's SCC record to 3-2 (6-9 overall).

The Huskies got the jump on the Falcons in the first half: they scored the first five goals of the game while holding Cerritos scoreless in the first quarter. The Falcons would finally score - twice - in the second quarter, but ELAC tacked on three more scores to go into the half up 8-2. The home Green scored the first two goals in the third quarter to take a 10-2 lead and looked to be in for an easy second half as they were up 11-3 midway through the third. But the Falcons rallied, scoring four straight goals to close within four at 11-7. And it looked like the visitors would take their momentum into the fourth quarter, but with one second left in the third, ELAC GK Lilac Cobos, who had swam with the ball out to mid-pool, launched a long-distance screamer that nailed the back of the Falcons' net right above the reach of GK Clairissa Nuno. ELAC closed the quarter up 12-7.

Cerritos would add three more goals in the fourth, but the Huskies scored two of their own to stave off the Falcons.

HUSKY BITS

• Freshman UT Jimena Vargas and sophomore UT Isabella Pizana each scored two goals in the win.

UP NEXT:

ELAC will travel to Santa Monica College Friday to play in SMC's mini-tournament. They'll face the host Corsairs and then Cypress College.