Agoura girls hope to repeat in water polo

MICHAEL COONS/The Acorn TOUGH COMPETITOR-Agoura's Lindsay Llewellyn attempts a shot during a recent match at AHS.

When the Agoura girls’ water polo team defeated Royal of Simi Valley, 12-1, in a Marmonte League match up last week, it wasn’t supposed to be so easy.

But the Highlanders lost a player, thrown out of the game for brutality with the score just 2-1 with 3:13 seconds remaining in the second quarter of a match played in Agoura, and the Chargers went on to score 10 unanswered goals. Brutality is a penalty in water polo and is similar to a flagrant foul or unnecessary roughness.

For Agoura and head coach Jason Rosenthal, it was another step in the path that he and his players hope will lead to a repeat visit to the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) finals, where the Chargers beat Santa Barbara for a title last winter.

Earlier in the season, Agoura (which improved 14-4 overall and 6-0 in league with the win over Royal) lost a player late in the game—for the same brutality call vs. Royal—but held on to win, 7-5. A tough rematch was expected.

"I knew the game was going to be physical, and the girls were getting into it," Rosenthal said after the 12-1 thrashing of Royal last week. "I told my girls, ‘Just take it. Try to beat them on the scoreboard instead of beating them up in the pool.’"

The call that sent the Royal opponent out of the game also gave Agoura an extra player, something Royal couldn’t be expected to overcome.

"We had a man-up advantage the whole rest of the game," Rosenthal said. "So it definitely worked to our advantage."

In the more recent win over Royal, Nicole Shiflett, a senior, led Agoura’s scoring attack with three goals, while Lauren Lohnberg and Jaella Nolan, both seniors, and Ashley Coleman, a junior, all added two goals, and Ilana Allegro, a senior, Ashley Coleman, a junior, and Lindsay Llewellyn, a junior, each scored once. Graziella Caredda, a senior, was in the goal for Agoura.

After losing nine players to graduation after winning the CIF championship last year, Agoura came into this season with lofty goals again. And this year’s Chargers had something to prove—that last year’s group wasn’t the only winning unit.

"They’re not," Rosenthal said, when asked if his players were surprised by their success this year. "These kids have played together for the JV and the frosh-soph levels, and then the last two years they practiced against those girls that graduated last year. They’ve really gelled and are playing well together."

The Charger players themselves aren’t surprised, either. And they said they did, indeed, enter the season with a lot of incentive.

"I’ve been with the program since I was a freshman," said Lohnberg. "And I’ve been playing with these girls since I was a freshman."

Said Allegro, "As freshmen, our JV team beat everybody, and we worked really hard."

Both senior leaders know they benefited from scrimmaging against the best—their own teammates—last year.

"We were practicing against the No. 1 team in the division," said Lohnberg. "There’s no question it helped."

Added Allegro, "Practices were better competition than games. They beat us up every day, they took out their frustration on us, but we learned from them."

Learned to win, learned to be league champions, possibly learned to be CIF champions.

"If you’d asked me at the end of last year, I don’t know if I would have said this year’s team would have been 14-4 at this point and time," Rosenthal said. "From here on we’re going to try to finish out our last two league games and then look towards trying to repeat as CIF champions.

"I’m really proud of them."