“Joyful.”
This is how Coach Roderick “Deke” Rowell describes his team’s most accomplished season during his eight year tenure as the varsity girls water polo coach. The season culminated in a 21-9 record, Paly girls water polo’s first league championship in 18 years, and a fifth seed finish in open division CCS.
However, Rowell doesn’t focus on the tangible outcomes of the season, instead choosing to measure the team through strength of team community and individual improvement.
“Ultimately I don’t care about winning and losing,” Rowell said. “My main objective is that the girls support each other, come together as a team and improve.”
Coach Rowell believed he first needed to establish team chemistry, which would then allow him to shift to the more technical aspects of coaching, easily implementing a game plan and strategies with a unit built around trust and positive communication.
“I’ve been around water polo for 40 years, I can coach forwards and backwards on some of the techniques and some of the things we’re trying to teach these girls,” Rowell said. “But none of that’s gonna matter if [the girls] don’t figure out how to come together as a team. You talk about chemistry. In my mind that supersedes so much more of the other technical stuff.”
Rowell expected a similar attitude from his captains, challenging them throughout the season to excel in regards to leadership. He emphasizes how proud he was of their efforts, highlighting the league championship as an especially significant moment, where the girls pulled together a 12-4 defeat against Los Altos.
“Normally we have the girls arrive an hour before the game starts. I got there maybe 70 minutes before, and the girls were already there. They were sitting in a circle; their captains had pulled them together. They got there even earlier than requested, and had taken the initiative to come together as a group.”
Senior team captain Katie Spitzer echoes Rowell’s sentiments on the team chemistry, specifically emphasizing the coaching staff as a key component of success.
“[Assistant coach] Tim and Coach Deke [Rowell] pushed us the entire season with morning practices and lots of game strategy,” Spitzer said. “They really fostered a good team environment.”
Senior Gin Williams further discusses the preparation for each game and practice.
“[Our coaches] pushed us because they knew we had potential this year to meet our collective goals,” Williams said. “They prompted us to start more regular weight training, went through film with us and dedicated so much time to the team.”
Similar to any athletic team, the girls water polo team faced a variety of roadblocks throughout the season.
“I think the main challenge we had to overcome was bouncing back after tough losses and not letting them define the rest of our season,” Williams said.
Coach Rowell emphasizes a pivotal two-game stretch that truly tested the willpower and resilience of each player.
“We had a challenging couple of games that we lost in overtime,” Rowell said. “It’s not easy, it’s a long season. Water polo is hard and demanding physically [and] mentally. Those two games were basically back to back overtime losses.”
Instead of faltering under the challenge, Rowell positioned the losses as an opportunity for growth.
“The beauty of sports [is that] it exposes you to all different kinds of situations,” Rowell said. “In today’s day and age it’s a little hard sometimes to fail, and we all are gonna fail at one juncture or another. I thought that the challenge in losing those tough games ultimately gave [the players] the strength to pull together.”
Williams highlights other obstacles the girls tackled.
“We had to learn how to communicate effectively on defense and not let our emotions get to us,” Williams said. “This year we also focused on mentally training for games to maintain our composure in crucial plays.”
Each test further contributed to the championship mentality of the team, and as the season progressed, the tight-knit environment made even the toughest of challenges manageable.
“We were all such good friends,” Williams said. “Any problems we faced we worked through together as a team, and so not only were we playing well in the pool, but we were connecting outside of it.”
While the coach and players emphasize chemistry, the hardware speaks for itself, and is an exciting reward for the long season.
“Getting to put up 2024 on the banner on the pool deck for girls water polo team champs was so fulfilling,” Spitzer said. “Especially after losing in the championship last year, accomplishing that goal of winning [the] league was such an amazing experience.”
In regards to the future, Rowell believes the 2024 season will set a standard for years to come.
“Last year’s team went a long way to building a culture that puts the program in a place to succeed and be the best it can be year in year out,” Rowell said. “So that’s a step in the right direction. We’re trying to say these are the expectations to be a part of the program and this is the culture we’re trying to create.”
High school teams are ever evolving: seniors graduate, junior-varsity players move up to varsity and competition changes. Nevertheless, Rowell hopes that an established culture will allow for new leadership to arise and future success.
“You don’t know who [leadership] is going to come from sometimes,” Rowell said. “It’s kind of one of those things that happens organically. We try to speak to what it means to be a leader, so the girls have some sense of what that should look and feel like.”
A coach plays an important role, but players also share responsibility in stepping into leadership roles.
“I always tell the girls it’s their program, their team,” Rowell said. “I’m just guiding it the best I can but ultimately I want them to feel that they are advocating for themselves and their program.”
For the moment however, these questions don’t need to be answered. One thing is certain: this season — filled with joy, passion, dedication and hard work — was one for the ages.
Roster:
Sophia Ahn
Maeva Herbert-Paz
Fallon Porter
Katie Spitzer (C)
Mila Bynum
Scarlett Frick
Lydia Mitz (C)
Sabrina Meyers
Katie Bradley
Delilah Kaplinsky
Gin Williams
Amanda Goody
Grace Henderson
Eliza Stoksik
Estelle Dufour
Coaches: Deke Rowell and Tim Mulcahy
Photo by Celeste Bates
Honorable Mention Dance: Paly girls dance finished the season in a familiar place, as National Champions for the third straight year.
For the third consecutive year, Paly girls dance are open division National Champions in USA dance. This year they accomplished the feat in the Extra Small Dance competition, different from their two prior national championships in the Hip Hop competition.
Junior Keira Mok highlights the excitement of winning a national title.
“It feels really good,” Mok said. “You compete against a lot of people in your division. [Winning] shows your skill level.”
Paly girls dance has made winning seem almost routine, yet in reality these victories are a reward for many months of early mornings, repetition and meticulous practice.
Training begins in the summer, where the team participates in the USA dance camp. Entering this specific camp is also what qualifies Paly to compete in the USA dance competitions during competition season. As summer transitions into the school year early morning practices begin – two hours a day four to five days a week.
According to Mok, the team begins learning the choreography for their competitions of choice in September. After the first few practices of actually learning the choreography, the remainder of the season is spent perfecting each routine.
As football season ends and competition season approaches, practices increase and lengthen, with Mok stating that some weekend practices extend up to seven hours.
In competitions, dances are voted on by a panel of judges, with panels increasing in size based on the importance of the competition. Specifically on their path to a national championship, the team first participated in a regional competition held at Lincoln High School to determine their qualification for Nationals. This year their performances at regionals earned them spots in both Hip Hop and Extra Small Dance for the open division at nationals. They then managed first in the Extra Small Dance competition and third in Hip Hop at nationals, capping off another successful Paly dance season.
Photo courtesy of Keira Mok
