The Laney women’s water polo team went 1–16 a year ago — including a 0–9 record in Coast Conference play — but you wouldn’t be able tell if you talked to Eagles head coach Beth Flynn.
Despite bringing back just one starter from last season, Flynn, a former Laney water polo player herself, feels pretty optimistic about what is a relatively new sport on campus.
The team only fielded eight players last year and often found it difficult to practice efficiently. Matters got worse when the team went into the Coast Conference championships with just seven players, the minimum allowed by the rules.
The team wound up having its best outings of the season, with Christine Reyna scoring a goal.
“That was the crowning achievement of the season.” Flynn said about the season-ending tournament.
While most coaches teach their teams the value of wins and losses, Flynn takes a different approach.
“We’re working on building skills, not just winning game,” she said.
“There’s a lot that came from the sport, regardless of who wins or loses a game.”
District faces $11.2 million deficit
Water polo seeks improvement
October 1, 2015
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In the fall of 2019, The Laney Tower rebranded as The Citizen and launched a new website. These stories were ported over from the old Laney Tower website, but byline metadata was lost in the port. However, many of these stories credit the authors in the text of the story. Some articles may also suffer from formatting issues. Future archival efforts may fix these issues.