[NEWS BRIEF] A hive mind

Sophomore Selina Qiu flings the ball past a Chavez defender toward the goal. The Chavez goalie blocked her shot, but Qiu came back the next play to score a goal for her team.

The water polo team won its third and last home game of the season against Chavez High School Sept. 30 at 6 p.m. with the girls winning 8-2 and the boys 11-5. After this game, the water polo team will play Lamar for its final game before they play at Districts on Friday.

Senior and captain of the boys’ water polo team Jonathan Spencer said this game was good for both teams, but especially prepares the boys’ team for their game against Lamar.

“Our next game is against Lamar, a more serious team, but we’re ready,” Spencer said. “We have a couple of plays and strategies going. I’m also going to try to aim the ball at the coach standing outside the pool on their side because if you take out the leader, the followers are not going to know what to do.”

Spencer credits much of the teamwork that he sees to the practices and the time the entire team has put in both outside and in the pool.

“It’s almost like we’re a hive mind,” Spencer said. “We were just all in sync in this game. It’s crazy. It’s like we all got surgical implants to link our minds up. We can cheat on tests too.”

The game went as expected for Spencer, but he said he was surprised with two late game shots from halfway across the pool.

“When Chavez scored a goal we didn’t expect, that was pretty crazy,” Spencer said. “I didn’t see the bounce shot by Chris, but we’re connected through a hive mind so I kind of felt what it was like.”

As the season comes to a close, freshman Christopher Gee said he has enjoyed playing with his teammates and is ready to play against the Texans.

“It’s pretty nice having a lot of teammates showing us the ropes,” Gee said. “We have a lot of communication and the team works really well together. It’s just sometimes in harder games, we fall apart and it has a domino effect, but I think, against Lamar, we’ll do better.”

Sophomore Mathilde Atitso, who is a foreign exchange student from France, said despite the difficulty with talking to others, she enjoys being on the team because of how open and friendly the other girls have been with her.

“We’re all really close to each other and we communicate very well with each other,” Atitso said. “At the beginning, it was hard because I didn’t understand what people were saying. But then as I played with them, I could understand more of what they were saying.”