By GERARDO RECINOS
Martinez Tribune
Alhambra’s girls pushed the magic number to four for coach Frank Reichert, as they took care of St. Patrick-St. Vincent-Vallejo. The 10-6 win leaves their coach with 296 career wins as the architect of the girls water polo program.
It should be said that before this season, winning a league game was a huge accomplishment. That’s how tough the Diablo Foothill Athletic league was. Both Alhambra teams would finish the season usually with 1-4 records in league. But all that is done with.
Now the Bulldogs can look at the rest of the field as the big dogs.
Daria Dragicevic, a senior, is one of the players who will know what that felt like. She scored the opener after Alhambra had drawn a kick out in the opening seconds of the match.
Anna Bernard assisted a counter-attack goal by freshman Kaylee Pond to double the Alhambra lead before the host Bruins scored their first. St. Patrick-St. Vincent scored on a counter themselves, with Malaya Taylor caught Alhambra’s Bernard rising and faked her our with a lob shot to open her account on the afternoon.
From that point it turned into a chess match. Both teams came back and answered a goal from the opponent, but it was clear the team that broke first would lose this match.
That moment came at the 2:11 mark in the second quarter. Julia Brown played a smooth pass to Pond, who deftly dropped a ball over the keeper, and Alhambra took the lead at 4-3. Then less than 30 seconds later, Alhambra scored again.
The Bruins drew a kick out of Pond, and looked to tie things up again. But then Alhambra stole the ball, countered to Sarah Exner, and the senior scored to take a two-goal lead.
The Bulldogs were able to coast from that point on. Although they endured a pair of unanswered goals quickly into the start of the second half, Alhambra retaliated quickly. Madison Stripling scored first, and then Katie Christman followed he up with a quick counter. Exner, Pond and Dragicevic each scored once more to close it out for Alhambra in style.
