Water Polo Teams Take Big Strides

Many people have difficulty pronouncing it, so here's hoping that the following sentence helps people better deal with the first part of Jim Floerchinger's surname:

Under the second-year Harvard coach, both the men's and women's water polo teams continued to "Floerch."

Got it? Good.

2000 was a banner year for the women's water polo team (20-12), as the Crimson rode a terrific performance at the College Water Polo Association (CWPA) Eastern Championships all the way to the National Championships, hosted by Indiana University.

Harvard's appearance at the tournament was its first in seven years. Harvard got an additional taste of victory while at Nationals, defeating Michigan for 15th place.

The men's team (14-11) improved on a 12-19 campaign the year before, and finished seventh at the CWPA Northern Championships.

All in all, water polo made huge strides in Coach Floerchinger's second year coaching the men and his first as full-time coach of the women. Harvard continues to make serious progress establishing itself in a sport traditionally dominated by West Coast schools.

The women got off to a slow start, losing three of their first four contests of the year to Villanova, Indiana and UMass at the Princeton Invitational.

However, the team gelled and settled in to win 10 of its next 11 games, including a March game against Ivy rival Brown.

The Crimson was led by tri-captains Leslie Bennett, Kit Hodge and Angela Munoz. A balanced scoring attack featured juniors Jesse Gunderson and Christine Meiers, junior Natasha Magnuson and freshman Jane Humphries.

"What's great with this group is the way they work," Floerchinger said before Easterns. "We've practiced these guys harder as the season's gone on when most teams would start letting up, and the results are there."

But if the hours and hours of laps were a good hurt, continually losing to UMass was the opposite. The Minutewomen, the top-ranked team in the East, would prove to be the Crimson's nemesis throughout the season. UMass swept its five meetings with Harvard, including an 8-4 defeat in the semifinal round of Easterns.

But a 9-7 victory over Villanova in the third-place game gave the Crimson the last Nationals berth.

"It's thrilling," Munoz said after the victory. "The entire season has been very, very exciting."

The women's team finished the season ranked No. 17 in the country, and with many of its top players returning next year, it should continue its rapid ascent in the water polo world.

Men's water polo is also on the rise at Harvard. After losing seven of its first 10 games, the Crimson turned its season around in one weekend by beating Lehman, Villanova, Fordham, Iona and the U.S. Merchant Marine Military Academy.

The weekend highlighted an eight-game winning streak that lifted the Crimson into the fifth seed of the CWPA Northern Division Championships. There, the team had an opportunity to make it to the Eastern Division Championships by finishing fourth in a field of eight teams. An opening-round win against Brown, which had defeated Harvard back in the dark days of September, would have done the trick.

Unfortunately for the Crimson, the Bears had other plans. They beat Harvard, 6-2, and the Crimson ended up placing seventh. The team loses captain Robinson Jacobs and seniors Dror Bar-Ziv and Terry Dougherty this summer, but a young, talented and more experienced team should return to continue Harvard's recent poolbound renaissance.