Women of Troy claim fourth NCAA title
Defeating all rivals, finishing the season with an undefeated record, setting new offensive records. These are all respectable goals for any athletic team, but for the USC women’s water polo team, none of them mattered if it didn’t achieve the highest goal of all: winning the NCAA championship.
Brick wall · Headlining the list of three USC players selected to the NCAA All-Tournament First Team, junior goalie Flora Bolonyai notched a career-high 17 saves in the title match on her way to earning MVP honors. – Courtesy of USC Sports Information
On Sunday, May 12, the squad did just that, reaching the apex of collegiate water polo with a thrilling 10-9 sudden-death victory over Stanford in the NCAA title game. After finishing regulation in a dead heat with the Cardinal, the Women of Troy engaged in a standoff for two more overtime periods and two additional sudden death periods before freshman driver Anni Espar sealed the victory with a laser that ricocheted off the crossbar and into the goal.
USC, seeded first in the tournament, brought a 27-1 record into the game. Stanford handed the team its only loss of the season in USC’s final home game on April 13, a 6-4 affair where the Cardinal dominated on the defensive end. The Women of Troy, however, still led the season series against their top rivals heading into the final game with victories over Stanford in late February and again in the Mountain Pacfic Sports Federation conference championship on April 28.
Previous records and statistics were meaningless for this game, though, as the slate was wiped clean before action commenced in Boston this month. The Women of Troy arrived in the championship game by defeating eighth-seeded Pomona-Pitzer in the first round 27-1 and then blasting fourth-seeded Hawai’i 16-9 in the semifinals. Stanford had a considerably tougher road to the title game, having to top seventh-seeded Iona in the first round and then defeat a very tough UCLA squad in the semifinals.
Stanford appeared to have the upper hand early in the game, bursting to a 2-0 lead after the first period of play and tacking on another unanswered goal in the second quarter. The Women of Troy, however, did not back down, as junior two-meter Madeline Rosenthal scored two goals and senior two-meter Nicolina McCall added one in the second frame to cut into the deficit.
The second half went back and forth, but USC gained the edge late in the fourth quarter as Espar scored a go-ahead goal with less than a minute left in regulation. With 35 seconds to play, the Cardinal had a 6-on-5 power-play opportunity, but USC junior goalie Flora Bolonyai made a huge save to hold on to the lead just a little longer. The lead wouldn’t last for long, though, as Stanford sophomore two-meter Ashley Grossman tipped in a pass with 12 seconds to go to knot the game at seven apiece.
Overtime began. The Women of Troy scored early in the first period of overtime when junior driver Kelly Mendoza found the back of the net to put USC up by one goal. The Cardinal, with a continual flair for the dramatic, nailed an equalizing goal with 10 seconds to go in the period as freshman driver Maggie Steffens squeaked a goal past Bolonyai.
Stanford scored first in the second regular overtime period on a goal by senior two-meter Melissa Seidemann, but with 55 seconds left, USC junior two-meter Hannah Buckling tied the game with her fourth goal. Bolonyai came up with a huge save before the period ended, and with the score standing at 9-9, the squads headed into the first period of sudden death.
Neither team could find the net in the first two periods of sudden death overtime as both defenses went into lockdown mode. In the third period of sudden death Stanford had several golden opportunities to score, but Bolonyai came through in the clutch, blocking both scoring opportunities. The second block set up the Women of Troy for their grand finale.
With 1:13 on the clock, Espar made her way to the center of the pool, drew a foul and rocketed in what would prove to be the winning goal. The Trojan bench erupted as soon as the ball found its way across the goal line — because with Espar’s goal, all of the hard work for the season had paid off in the form of an NCAA title.
“We’ve worked so hard, we’ve done so much training, so much swimming, so much everything to finally be [in the championship game],” Rosenthal said after the game. “We all knew, especially when it went into overtime, that we’ve come too far [not to win] … We fought and we fought and we fought and we ended up with the trophy.”
The championship is the USC women’s water polo program’s fourth overall. In each of the previous three seasons (1999, 2004 and 2010), the program won the championship in the same school year as the men’s team, and this season was no different: The men’s squad locked up their fifth straight championship in 2012.
“We knew it was going to be a war, we knew it was going to take every ounce of energy we had,” head coach Jovan Vavic said. “I give so much credit to our players. We were down by three, we looked like we were going to win the game in regulation; they tied it. What a goal by Anni Espar at the end. It was absolutely one of those games for the ages.”
With her outstanding performance in the cage, Bolonyai was crowned MVP of the tournament. Her 17 saves in the title game set a career high for the junior. Not only did Bolonyai serve as an anchor in the pool, her confidence outside of it set the tone for the team as well.
“I was thinking that we were up 5-0 at MPSF [against the Cardinal], we are able to play good water polo against Stanford, and we can do it,” Bolonyai said. “At least for me it was important that we have beaten them before.”
This victory brings the USC seniors’ careers full circle. They won the NCAA championship as freshmen in 2010, and after falling in the NCAA tournament twice as sophomores and juniors, returned to glory in their fourth year.