By Georgia Thelen
Review Staff Writer
After a full season of learning the game and developing their skills in 2015, the Lake Orion Boy’s Varsity Water Polo team has returned to prove they are gaining experience.
The team has returned 16 of 18 players from last season, but has also gained 9 new players who are hoping to lead their team to victory. The Varsity teams’ focus this year will be to continue gaining understanding and working as a unit.
The Varsity boys are not hiding their Dragon strength with an August 23 win of 13-11 over Troy Combined (Troy Athens and Troy High) and a September 1 win of 12-4 over Chelsea. They also competed in the Jenison Varsity tournament coming out at 1-5 with an 8-4 win over Portage. Goalie Michael Lowry was 5 for 6 in saving penalty shots at the Jenison tournament.
“The teams biggest strength is defense. This is one of our primary focuses and when they play team defense, they can have a lot of success,” said Coach John Jess.
This season’s Varsity team captains are Avery Womack, Nathan Beran, and goalie Michael Lowry. The top scorer thus far in the season is junior, Evan Lindquist. The team has also gained an exchange student from Italy, Gianluca Saletta. The team looks forward to gaining insight from Saletta’s past water polo experience.
The Varsity team currently has a dual game record of 4-1 and a 5-6 record overall. They have played in two tournaments so far this season where they got to see strategies and gain knowledge from some of the best teams in the state.
“Our biggest competition in the league will be with Birmingham Groves and Seaholm,” said Jess. “We will compete against those teams for 3rd, 4th, and 5th in the district and the top 4 teams from the District Championship will move on to Regionals.”
The Varsity and JV teams will compete on Sept. 16 and 17 in the District 3 Seeding Tournament against Birmingham Groves, Birmingham Seaholm, Grand Ledge, East Lansing, Okemos and Troy Combined.