The Pomona-Pitzer men’s water polo team (13-13 overall, 4-5 SCIAC) went into last weekend’s SCIAC post-season tournament hoping to redeem what they felt was a sub-par year. Their first game, against La Verne University, looked as though it would be a good springboard into the latter rounds of the tournament.

Looks can be deceiving.

"We will never speak of that game again," said Dustin Baker ’01, echoing the comments of every Sagehen.

Suffice it to say the Hens were eliminated in the first round. Although they were able to maintain the lead for most of the first half, occasionally allowing La Verne to tie the score, Pomona-Pitzer was not playing its best. La Verne did beat the Hens in their only prior meeting of the season, but that Sagehen defeat, like many others this season and including the one last weekend, probably had more to do with their underachieving play than anything else.

After their first-round loss on Saturday, Pomona-Pitzer was sentenced to play woeful Caltech at 9:00 in the morning. The timing and location of that game, held at Caltech (in Pasadena) like the rest of the games of the SCIAC tournament, forced the Hens to leave campus at 7:15 that morning.

All of that hassle just to beat the crap out of Cal Tech.

The final score of that game was 12-9. The only reason for the game’s apparent closeness was the fact that the Sagehens’ starters spent the majority of the contest on their asses, reading the newspaper as the team’s youngsters got valuable experience.

"There wasn’t very much interesting about those last two games," said Ryan Williams ’01, "especially after the loss the day before. It was a commonplace, ho-hum ending to our season."

Their second game on Sunday, against the Occidental University Tigers, provided a fitting end to the season. Thing is, the Sagehens played Oxy roughly 26 times this season, with Oxy’s play worsening each successive meeting.

"It was like, ‘well, I guess we’re playing Occidental again,’" said David Ratner ’01.

As my left earlobe could have predicted, the Hens administered their customary thrashing of the overly physical, under-skilled Tigers. Though the score of this game has not yet been made official by the powers that be, the score was probably something along the lines of 16-3. Don’t be surprised if Williams and Marc Cavagnolo ’01 figured prominently in the Sagehens’ offense.

This was a season of unfulfilled expectations for Pomona-Pitzer. Ratner saw his season end in quite a different way than most had anticipated.

"We thought we had a chance to play in Western [Water Polo Association Championships] this season. We made it last year, and I don’t know how much more talented we were [last year] than we are this season. Our win against UC-Santa Cruz was huge, and Harvard was also key, but after that early run, we kind of fizzled from there," said Ratner.

"We’ll have five out of seven starters returning next year, though, so we should still have all the athletes we need."