Gallery • 10 Photos

Richard Byrne

Freshman Storm Jackson rifles the ball into the top corner of the net.

Ending in a dramatic 14-13 finish, the boys’ varsity water polo team overcame a huge early deficit to beat the Terra Linda Trojans in the Marin County Athletic League (MCAL) semi-final. The Giants improved their record to a stellar 23-2, but it took everything to squeeze out a victory.
The Giants started the game trailing 2-1 as the Trojans came out looking to avenge their regular season loss to the Giants. However, the Giants answered back with a goal to tie the game in the first quarter.
Fired up, the Giants continued their momentum to take the lead in the second quarter. However, the Trojans had an answer for the Giants as they went on a 3-1 run to end the half. With the Trojans up 6-4 at halftime, the Giants knew that they needed to score first coming out of the break. They did exactly that when freshman Storm Jackson rifled the ball into the top corner, reducing the deficit to one goal. Unluckily, the Giants missed many opportunities to tie the game and the Trojans got an 8-5 lead after back-to-back goals in the third quarter.
Senior Ossie Joplin converted a beautiful shot to pull the Giants back into the game, trailing by two goals to end the quarter. The fourth quarter saw the Giants pull within one goal of the Trojans. Terra Linda then scored what seemed to be the dagger with less than two minutes remaining. This gave the Trojans a convincing two-goal lead with barely enough time for a Giants’ comeback.
Joplin found the back of the net with just over a minute left in the game on a beautiful backhand shot. Then, the Giants earned a crucial stop on defense, giving them a chance to tie the game with 30 seconds left. However, Joplin’s shot was blocked by the goalkeeper, giving the Trojans a chance to run out the clock. The Trojans drained the clock by holding onto the ball in the corner of the pool until Jackson came up with a vital steal with just 10 seconds left.
After a timeout, the Giants ran a play to get Joplin the ball again. As the ball came to Joplin with three seconds left, there was nothing he could do besides shoot. He rose out of the water and launched the ball past the Terra Linda goalkeeper, tying the score with 1.7 seconds on the clock and sending the game into overtime.
The Giants started the first period of overtime strong when freshman Maddox Mcclellan placed a ball into the bottom corner of the net. However, the Giants quickly found themselves in a familiar position trailing at the end of the first period of overtime. With only a minute remaining in the second period of overtime, Mcclellan completed his hat-trick by tying the game up with a long shot from the right wing. The game looked like it was heading for sudden death, however the Trojans moved the ball swiftly through the Giants’ defense and fired home a goal that seemed to have won the game for the Trojans with just 46 seconds remaining.
Similarly, the Trojans had another golden opportunity to run out the clock, but with two seconds left, senior Sawyer Goldberg forced a turnover that landed right into Joplin’s hands. Without any hesitation, Joplin once again tied the game up, scoring with no time remaining on the clock.
Now, the game came down to sudden death with each team needing a single goal to win and move on to the MCAL finals. Both teams had a possession and were unable to score. When the Giants got the ball back off a crucial miss from Terra Linda, Goldberg iced the game with a blistering shot, capping off a remarkable comeback victory from the Giants. Junior Charlie Poser credits the win to the relentless nature of the team.
“In tonight’s game we showed how the game is never over. We were down almost the entire game but we pushed into double overtime and sudden death to win. Sawyer and Storm had game-tying steals at the end of the fourth [quarter] and overtime to get us back even,” Poser said. “Overall, we fought back one possession at a time, kept our cool and showed that no game is ever over.”
If you want to see the Giants back in action, they play next on Nov. 2 at 12 p.m. away against Archie Williams with a chance to win their third straight MCAL championship.