Serra water polo coach Tim Kates is only in his second year with the Padres, so he may not be fully aware of the program’s recent history.
But senior co-captain Sean Coffin was acutely aware of the Serra’s past couple of years.
“We beat SI my freshman year and haven’t beaten a WCAL team in league since,” said Coffin, who is a three-year varsity player.
The Padres have already accomplished quite a bit so far this season. With eight wins coming into Wednesday’s game with St. Ignatius, Serra has already eclipsed last year’s win total. And a 14-11 win over Valley Christian Saturday at the St. Francis tournament snapped a long losing streak to West Catholic Athletic League teams.
But there was one more immediate goal the Padres wanted to reach: to win their first game in WCAL play since 2021.
Mission accomplished.
Trailing 4-2 after one period of play, Serra would outscore the Wildcats 11-4 the rest of the way in posting a 13-8 victory — their first since beating SI Oct. 29, 2021.
“We were definitely looking at this game (Wednesday) as an opportunity to win,” Coffin said. “I think we were all really hungry for that.”
Coffin said they played Valley Christian’s club team during a summer tournament and lost in a shootout. But it was enough to give them confidence coming into the season. The win over Valley Christian over weekend boosted that confidence even higher going into Wednesday’s game.
A match Serra promptly fell behind 4-1 in the first period. Looking stagnant, the Padres went 0 for 3 on the power play early in the quarter, including an empty possession in the game’s opening seconds.
It was SI that opened the scoring less than a minute into the match when Brody Paine converted a Desmond Garzee pass into a 1-0 lead.
But Coffin answered about 20 seconds later. He was fouled on a drive to the goal and took it himself on the restart to tie the score at 1-all.
The Wildcats proceeded to score the next three goals to go up 4-1, but it was a power play goal with under a minute to play in the opening period that appeared to propel the Padres to the win.
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Because in the second quarter, Serra looked like a completely different team. The Padres were aggressively attacking the SI goal, with drives, quick passing around the perimeter and finding teammates driving into the set.
Serra got a goal closer 14 seconds into the second period when sophomore Colin Wright drew a 5-meter penalty shot which Coffin converted to close to 4-3.
It was the first of three unanswered goals that gave the Padres the halftime lead. Wright tied the game off a pass from Dante Tarantino at the 5:48 mark and they took the lead for good with 2:30 left in the half when Tarantino and Wright hooked up again to give Serra a 5-4 advantage.
Wright and Coffin did the bulk of the damage offensively for Serra. Wright finished with a game-high six goals, while Coffin added four and assisted on a fifth.
“[Coffin] has a cannon,” Kates said. “I have a radar gun in the office and a couple weeks ago he was hitting 45 mph.”
Added Coffin: “I think Colin Wright gets it going for us.”
Serra added to its lead in the third quarter with Wright converting a penalty shot, drawn by Coffin, to make it 6-4 at the 6-minute mark. The two then teamed up for a Wright goal and a 7-4 lead with 3:16 left in the third.
SI finally snapped a long scoring drought by scoring back-to-back goals to cut its deficit to one with with 1:31 left in the quarter, but Reed Hagmueller pushed Serra’s lead back to two, 8-6, off an assist from Wright.
The Padres scored the first two goals of the fourth period to open up a 10-6 lead and the Wildcats could not claw their way back into the game.
While Coffin admitted a win over any team in the WCAL would have been nice, but the fact the Padres broke their long winless streak against the rival Wildcats made it that much more special.
“I remember my sophomore year (their fans) were yelling, ‘Whose your padre?” Coffin recalled. “It would have felt good to [break the losing streak] against anybody, but it feels so good to do it against SI.”
For Kates, he’s just glad to see his team’s hard work starting to pay off.
“Last year was rough,” Kates said, adding that his team lost several one-goal games. “I love how hard my guys work. It’s an industrious group. I don’t think you can teach that.”
(2) comments
A huge Congratulations to the Serra Water Polo team . My son played water polo at Serra graduating in 2021. He had a great time, even though they lost a lot of games. It is a fun, difficult, demanding sport! Serra is known as a football school; however, both my sons had an excellent athletic experience in swimming and water polo, and cross country and track and field. Such happy memories even during the Covid years. Go Padres! Parent 2021 and 2022. BTW, my sons who are in college now still talk constantly about how much they loved their high school experience!!
This is a very hard working group who are making immense strides under Coach Kates. It's great to see. Thank you DJ for highlighting their success. GO PADRES!
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