The Paly Boys Water Polo played a heated game against their cross-town rivals, the Gunn Titans, and lost by a score of 11 to 5 due to sloppy play and questionable calls.

Coming off of an emotional shoot-out win against Mountain View, the team came out flat, 4 to 3 hole at the end of the first quarter, despite not playing their best. Contributing to this deficit were some unfortunate calls made by the referees, resulting in several goals coming off the board. Junior Loic Ijzerman was visibly upset after these calls.

“Yeah, you know, it seemed like nothing was going good for us that game, and then there were a couple of calls that didn’t go our way” Ijzerman said. “It was just an all around frustrating game.”

In the second quarter, the mistakes continued to happen for Paly, with missed opportunities and lots of ejections impacting the play of the team. Despite their continued struggles, the team was still behind by just three goals.

Once play resumed for the second half, an uneventful third quarter took place, filled with poor play by both teams, resulting in no change to the score.

At the end of the third quarter, and the beginning of the fourth quarter, captains Ryan Stanley (‘20) and Dexter Gormley (‘20) were both majored, respectively, meaning that they were ejected for the remainder of the game. This was the death blow to the teams comeback bid, as they were left without their top two scorers.

Following the ejections, the Paly defense fell apart, allowing four goals, and the final whistle blew the game dead, with the scoreboard reading 11 Guest, 5 Home. Ijzerman still has high hopes for the team, despite the loss.

“The good thing is that it seemed like almost everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and we were still competitive for most of the game,” Ijzerman said.