The Gainesville High School girls and boys water polo teams made short work of the Apopka Blue Darters to sweep the 1A District 1 team championships Thursday evening at Northeast Pool. It marked the second straight year that the Hurricanes swept both titles.
The Lady Hurricanes team came out hot, getting their first goal from junior Bayley Mobley 15 seconds into the match. One minute and sixteen seconds later, Mobley scored again to extend the lead.
“We were trying to work on our offense more this game,” said Mobley, a first-year player who had a team-high four goals. “Our strategy was to move around and make passes to get some shots which we were luckily able to do.”
By halftime, GHS had an 8-1 lead stifling the Blue Darters who scored their first goal with 3:50 left in the second quarter. The Hurricanes never looked back, winning the game, 10-4, to win their second consecutive and second district title in school history.
The win avenged a 4-3 loss to the Blue Darters at the Lyman Classic 12 days ago which kept them from winning the tournament title.
“We did a lot of game planning before the game,” said first-year coach and GHS alum Mason Bandics who played for the Hurricanes two years ago. “We came in with a good plan. We knew we had to move the ball around. We used that to our advantage and got a hot start.”
GHS boys win 16-4
The GHS boys were even more impressive as they jumped out to a 7-2 lead after the first quarter and poured it on, romping to a 16-4 win.
“They were a little shorthanded as one of their starters was out, so it was a little easier,” said Badics. “We still had to play whoever was in the pool. We had a great game plan and executed well so credit to our players.”
Leading the way was the lone senior Obi Smith who scored a game-high six goals.
“This was a huge rebuilding season for us. We had a new coach and new players. It was great to go back-to-back and keep it in the city,” said Smith. “We tried to go out and set the tone early. We had a couple of goals early in the quarter and took it from there.”
GHS center, junior Ian Wooden, proved to be unstoppable in the middle scoring four goals.
“I just pushed them out of the way and made some space for myself,” said Wooden, a third year player. “They thought I wasn’t going to try that hard and our team wasn’t good enough. Me working to get space really freed us up and allowed us to get goals.”
The Hurricanes move on to Regionals at host the Sanford Seminole next week. The girls are currently ranked sixth in the region and 28th in the state and the boys are ranked sixth in the region and 25th in the state.
“We want to continue what we started but we have a lot of work to do before next week,” said Badics.