The Game Before the Final
The day when we played our first game, we noticed that the players of the other team where much taller than us, they had long arms and legs. I guess that they saw the Peruvian team who’s tallest player measures 1.84m and thought that this was a joke; plus I bet they didn’t even imagine that Peru had a water polo team either. Their first impression after checking us out was to joke around, laugh and play a little without being disrespectful but we could sense that they were not taking us seriously. We won that game 16-8 and started to gain the respect of the teams.
Going back to our hardest game, the semi finals. If we won we classified, if we lost we played for bronze. Players, especially the newbies where nervous. Our coach Tony was not physically with us, so this was the moment where we really had to show off who we were. Tony is the BEST coach I have had . He has 32 years of experience as a coach and has trained players such as Ivan Perez). As a captain, I wanted to make sure everything went well, that players were ready for the game, that we knew the positions, that we all warmed up correctly. Since our team is united, I wasn’t preoccupied that there would be problems, I knew everything was going to be fine. |
I remember that I don’t like shooting penalties, I never have. Generally Sebastian or Diego are the players that take the penalties. In the Second quarter, there was a penalty shout out in our favor committed by myself. Diego was not on the field so I remembered Manel Estiartes book: “As a captain, you have to take the responabilities on the court. You have to give trust to your players and know that you are the chosen one for the penalties and that you will score”. I grabbed the ball, threw and scored. The second quarter finished 4-2. Number 5, the best player of the opposite team scored the second goal. Diego scored the 4th goal for us. Gabriel, the fastest swimmer on the team asked for a change so Dancourt entered the water. He is also a very fast swimmer. Eduardo who is the oldest of the team asked for a change as well, so one of the players debuting entered the water, Nicolas Villar-Cordoba, a player who has 15 but has a gift to play water polo. The third quarter started and the opponents scored their third goal. The score was now 4-3. The game continued, Dancourt started to swim and gained an explosion on our favor, we asked for a time out. Diego and I discussed the alignment that we were going to use. We decided to start in a 4-2 arrangement and finish in a 3-3 with Sebastian, Diego and me attacking. We formed correctly but the strategy didn’t work. We went to defend, got into our positions, I was guarding set. Suddenly a fast shot was made out of the 5m line but Jefferson stopped the ball, amazing block. We went on the counter attack; I decided to enter set and scored. The third quarter ended 5-3. |