The women’s water polo team ended its California spring break trip Saturday with a 10-5 loss to No. 20 San Diego State University and a 13-5 win over Fresno Pacific University. Bruno (13-12) turned in an 8-4 record on the West Coast.
Kate Woods ’14 led the team’s scoring during the trip, netting a total of 26 goals, including a five-goal outburst that gave the the Bears the lead over Concordia University in Irvine, Calif. Wednesday. Liz Rosen ’15 tallied 17 of her own with two hat tricks.
The trip served as a homecoming for most of the team — of the 20 players on Brown’s roster, 17 hail from the Golden State.
Bruno will host its first home game in nearly two months Tuesday when it takes on Harvard.
The Bears opened their trip with three straight wins over California State University at San Bernardino, Whittier College and Sonoma State University. Against CSUSB, Brown jumped out to an early 3-0 lead in the first quarter, an edge it did not relinquish. Five different Bears tallied two goals apiece in an 11-5 victory.
In its matchup against Whittier later that day, Bruno fought through an early deficit to defeat the Poets 9-5. Rosen scored three goals to bring her total to five on the day, while Shannon Crowley ’17 and Emily McNamara ’14 each tossed in two.
In the front end of another doubleheader the next day, Brown showed no signs of fatigue in a 10-7 win over Sonoma. Goalie Sarah Shin ’14 led Bruno to its third straight win, registering one of her best performances of the season with 11 saves. She turned aside just over 61 percent of Seawolf shots, eclipsing her then-average rate of 36 percent.
Bruno’s next two matchups brought the toughest competition the team had seen all season — No. 9 Loyola Marymount University and No. 6 University of California at Irvine. The rankings did not lie, and the Bears fell to the Lions 14-6 and then to the Anteaters 17-7. The two high-powered offenses overwhelmed Bruno’s defensive efforts, converting on a combined 79 percent of their shots on goal.
Following their first day off during the break, the Bears edged Pomona-Pitzer 11-10 Tuesday. After the Sagehens’ Mahalia Prater-Fahey knotted the game up at 10 with 5:15 to play, Rosen responded with a go-ahead goal — the eventual game-winner — just 27 seconds later. Woods added her first hat trick of the break to begin a streak of four straight games with at least three goals.
In the afternoon, Brown took down Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 12-9 on hat tricks from Woods and Olivia Santiago ’16.
For the first and only time on the trip, Bruno fell to an unranked opponent Wednesday — California Baptist University squeezed out a win in overtime. Woods sent the game into extra time with her third goal of the game with 1:51 left in the fourth quarter. Crowley put the Bears up 9-8 with 1:19 left in the first of two overtime periods. But the second was all California Baptist. Hannah Evans tied the score just 33 seconds in, and Christina Young hit the game-winner with 11 seconds remaining to give the Lancers the win.
In the second game of the day, Woods continued her hot streak, scoring five more goals in Brown’s 10-8 victory over Concordia. Down 5-2 at the half, Bruno scored eight goals in the second half, with four coming from Woods. McNamara and Sarah Presant ’14 each added a pair of goals.
Thursday brought another overtime victory for the Bears, this time in their second win over Whittier. Bruno fought off a Poet rally in the third period to force the game into overtime, tied at eight. The extra frame went scoreless until McNamara found her third goal of the game with just 12 seconds remaining, giving Brown a 9-8 edge.
Saturday brought a split for the Bears against San Diego State and Fresno Pacific. In its third game of the trip against a ranked opponent, Bruno struggled again, tying its lowest goal total of the West Coast swing in a 10-5 loss to the Aztecs. Bruno ended the spring break campaign on a high note with a 13-5 win over the Sunbirds, fueled by a hat trick from Crowley and pairs of goals from Woods and Hannah Koper ’17.
After this week’s matchup against the Crimson, Bruno will play four more games in April before the CWPA Northern Division Championships.
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the women's water polo team defeated the University of California at San Bernardino. In fact, no such school exists; Brown played against California State University at San Bernardino. The Herald regrets the error.
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