Agoura water polo team hopes to contend

The Agoura High School boys’ water polo team finished in second place in Marmonte League play last year and was eliminated in the second round of the CIF playoffs.

This year, coach Jason Rosenthal hopes to see his team repeat as a playoff team, one that will hopefully get deeper into the postseason.

The Charger coach said the team would fight its relative youthfulness and seek season-long progress.

After a win over Peninsula early in the season, Rosenthal said, "Today I started a freshman, a sophomore and two juniors. So we’re looking towards later in the season. Now it’s kind of a learning experience."

Agoura hopes to contend with Royal, the prohibitive favorite to repeat as Marmonte League champions, but the Charger coach and players are realistic.

"Royal’s a notch above everybody else," Rosenthal said.

"They have a huge group of seniors returning that went to the finals last year and pretty much everybody else in league has got some younger kids playing."

The Charger players worked hard in the offseason to improve upon their 6-2 mark in league last year.

"We played T.O. and Newbury Park during the summer," Rosenthal said.

"We kind of battled it out with them, so I think it will be a pretty competitive year for us. It’s going to push us to make the playoffs."

James Wong, a senior and team captain said he expects the Chargers to get better despite some growing pains early this season.

"We’re not the biggest or most experienced team," Wong said after the win over Peninsula.

"We have a lot of freshmen and sophomores. We lost a lot of our major scorers and some of our defensive players."

A weakness that Agoura will have this year? "Knowing what to do in the pool," Wong said.

After the Peninsula win, Wong added, "We still need to move the ball around a lot better than we did today, but we’re starting to come together as a team."