The Boys’ Water Polo team traveled to the New England Championship at Exeter on Saturday, November 8th, and returned with the runner-up trophy, the co-MVP of the tournament, and two all-tournament players.
The team first faced a tough Suffield squad, one of two schools that beat the number-one-seeded Deerfield team this season. Suffield came out strong, scoring in the first few minutes of the first period. Then Choate responded when Co-Captain Dan Fallahi ’09 scored the first goal for Choate off a pass from Taylan Aplan ’10. The next Choate possession resulted in a goal by Alpan—making the score 2-1. Choate continued with its strong run, and by the fourth quarter, the team led 12-4; Choate gave up only two more goals to Suffield. Goalie Matt Inglis ’09 had a 20-save game against Suffield, with Fallahi and Alpan scoring, respectively, three and four goals, Alex Poltash ’12 and McClatchy Ruskin ’11 both scoring two, and Kevin Chu ’10 scoring one. With this 12-6 win, Choate advanced to the championship game against Deerfield, for the second year in a row.
In the championship game, coming off of a close 4-3 game against Deerfield two weekends ago, Choate was out for revenge. The game started off with two goals by Deerfield in the first minute; however, Inglis soon spearheaded a tightening of the Choate defense. After a failure to capitalize on a man-up play, Choate’s Poltash scored when Choate was down two men because of penalties. For the rest of the 4:45 of the half, both defenses played well, allowing no goals and leaving the score 2-1 Deerfield at the end of the first half. During Choate’s first second-half possession, a failed attempted Deerfield steal at mid-pool left Alpan open: he evened the score, 2-2. Choate and Deerfield traded goals in the opening of the final period, making the score 3-3, with another Poltash goal tying the game for Choate. With 1:38 left, Deerfield scored its first of three goals, which led to a 6-3 final score. Inglis had 17 saves for the game, Poltash two goals, and Alpan one goal.
There were some outstanding players for Choate in this year’s championship tournament. According to Patrick Li ’10, “Kevin Chu played the best defensively, because he drew the most offensive fouls on Deerfield’s best players.” Alpan scored a total of five goals in both games, making him the team’s high scorer for the tournament, followed by Poltash with four goals. Li added that, “Matt Inglis ’09 did really well defensively. He was like a brick wall.” Describing the game, Li stated that, “It was a really close game; we were tied up until [the final minutes of] the last period.” For his performance in the Suffield and Deerfield games, Inglis was named co-MVP of the tournament, with Alpan and Chu named to the all-tournament team for, respectively, their offensive and defensive roles.
Going into the first game of the tournament, Choate was ranked second in New England. Though Suffield was ranked fourth, Patrick Li explained, the team “knew Suffield was strong…we played them just like we played Deerfield. We ended up playing real well, and ended up beating them.” Li said, “We entered the final [game] as underdogs.”
Despite their “underdog” status, Choate never gave up in the final game. The team had a great year, with a final record of 13-6-1; this is the second year in a row that Choate has been runner-up in the New England championship.
Taylan Alpan ’10 prepares to fire a shot at the opposing goalie. Ian Morris
