Gulliver girls’ water polo team falls short against former coach, reigning state champs
Every time Gulliver girls’ water polo goalie Sofia Beltran stopped a big shot, the Raiders’ fans chanted “brick wall” to cheer her on.
While Beltran, even as a seventh-grader, lives up to the nickname most of the time she’s in the pool, Gulliver ran into an even bigger obstacle on Saturday morning.
The Raiders couldn’t figure out a way to land enough shots around Lake Nona senior goalie Zasha Soler and ended what had been a dominant season to that point with a frustrating 7-4 loss to the Lions in the state final at Belen Jesuit.
Gulliver (23-2) came up short in its bid to win its first state title since 2013 while Lake Nona secured its third consecutive state title.
“I really didn’t think we had that much power at the start of the season,” Gulliver coach Carroll Vaughan said. “Of course, you always want to get to the finals. They gave their best effort, but Lake Nona has a great team.”
The Raiders were held to a season-low for goals after not scoring fewer than eight in a game all season.
Soler, an Iona signee, blocked five shots at close range and stopped two penalty shots in the fourth quarter and three for the game.
But it wasn’t just the shots she stopped.
Soler’s presence in front of the net disrupted Gulliver’s attack as Raiders’ shots hit the crossbar or the posts at least seven times as well as several other misfires wide.
“Our girls were a little nervous. We had a lot of opportunities but we kept hitting the bar and they kept doubling or tripling me,” Gulliver leading scorer Gaby Montalvo, a Brown University commit, said. “We were right on top of them until that fourth quarter.”
As many teams had this season, Lake Nona made a point to pay close attention defensively to Montalvo. The Lions executed that strategy better than any other team this season, which also led to their offensive woes.
“That’s how we play always, we depend on our defense,” Lake Nona coach Alex Bennett said. “(Soler) played great. She let one goal in early and then we fixed what we needed to fix. We funneled the ball into her and she made a lot of big saves.”
Bennett, who led Gulliver’s girls to eight state titles and winning streak of over 200 consecutive games in the early 2000s, watched his own star field player, Emily Scheerer held to only two goals. But it was the Raiders’ offensive futility that doomed them as Gulliver was held scoreless after the 3:31 mark of the third quarter until Sophia Kingston scored an inconsequential goal with six seconds left in the fourth and the outcome settled.
“We needed to move her around and get around their defense,” Vaughan said. “We just didn’t take advantage of enough opportunities and they did a great job of taking Gaby out of the game early.”
Giorgia Pascual, Montalvo and Aria Torretta will be three key players Gulliver will have to replace next season. But the Raiders return the rest of their roster and are poised to build off their second trip to the state final in the past three seasons.
“They just have to keep pushing from day one and make the best of their opportunities,” Pascual said.
