For what they hoped not to be the last time of the season, the Dartmouth Women's Water Polo Team piled into vans and headed off to a tournament. Excitement built as the team arrived at the Muir-Samuelson Natatorium at Williams College for the New England Division Championship Tournament.
Because of the team's flawless 8-0 record over the course of the regular season, Dartmouth was poised in the brackets to do well. The Big Green first faced the Minutemen of the University of Massachusetts, a game that highlighted Dartmouth's potential both on offense and defense. Dartmouth scored a total of 16 goals spread between many players: 3 by Amelia Noble (DMS, #10); 2 by Lisa Rennels ('14, #9), Cat Donahoe ('15, #11), Kristen Flint ('14, #12), and PJ Bigley ('17, #15); 1 by Margaret Rollins ('15, #2), Katie Lachance ('15, #3), Grace McDevitt ('14, #4), Charlotte Kama'i ('16, #16), and Meredith Sweeney ('14, #17). Defensively, Dartmouth only allowed the ball to find the back of the cage 4 times and did not allow UMass to convert on any of their 3 woman-up opportunities.
Satisfied with a 16-4 win, the team rested during their long break before facing the 4th seed, Northeastern University. The Big Green came away from the hard-fought game with a 11-7 win, which secured their spot in the game for the championship, to be played the next day.
Dartmouth was well supported with a huge fan base this weekend, and as such we had a reservation for over 30 at a local restaurant - thanks to the McDevitts, Wenzels, Meyers, Flints, Rollins, and Lachances for a fantastic dinner!
The team was excited and confident warming up for the championship game against Middlebury, partially owing to Coach Fanis' pep talk before we hit the pool, who had "run some stats" and calculated that we would win by 4 points if we scored one more goal than our opponents in every quarter. This is, in fact, exactly how the game played out, leading to a final score of 7-3, aided in large part by 3 goals from Cat Donahoe ('15, #11) and 2 goals from Meghan Christie ('17, #8) and a fantastic defense from the whole team.
With the final buzzer of the game, Dartmouth had both won the title of 2014 New England Division Champions and a ticket to the CWPA National Tournament!
The Women's National Collegiate Club Championship Tournament will take place at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva, Ohio on May 2-4. For the schedule and more information, please see here. Needless to say, the Dartmouth Women's Water Polo team is excited to put in some hard work for the next couple of weeks and get ready to take on some national competition!