By Ed Piper
La Jolla's girls water polo team, ranked fourth in San Diego, faced an important regular-season closer at home against rival Cathedral Catholic Tues., Feb. 4.
A win would help Coach Amy Jennings' team in the CIF seedings, which come out Sat., Feb. 8.
"Our goals for the game are to win the game and get as high a seeding as we can," said the fourth-year coach poolside before the afternoon match.
With first-string goalie Shauna Franke proclaiming her injured finger healed and back in the cage, the Vikings still went down 2-0 in the first two minutes to the top-ranked Dons.
Then, from the 5:32 mark in the opening period to the 2:32 mark in the second, the Vikings scored five goals to take a 5-2 lead.
Seniors Paige Olson and Stephanie Babcock knotted the count with goals.
Then captain Jessica Newell fired one in. Sophia Lynn followed that with a score from her spot in the two-meter.
Later, after taking the lead and building on it, never to relinquish it, the Vikings were led by Olson on a score again for 6-3.
The Dons closed the gap to 6-5. Franke called out at the end of a timeout, "You (teammates) better score a goal." They did. 7-5, with under three minutes left in the contest.
With a little over a minute left, Cathedral scored again. 7-6. Jennings took a timeout with 34 seconds left. She yelled for it for multiple seconds before the referee on her side of the pool heard her.
Cathedral's coach called a timeout to set up her offense with 24 seconds. The shot went wide left, Franke watching it glance away, and La Jolla held on to win the thriller, 7-6.
Before the game, Jennings said, "What our strength is is team communication. Shauna and Jess are leading that."
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