The Lady Vaqueros bounced back from last week’s loss with an aggressive 17-4 victory against Citrus College Friday, making it their fourth win this week.

After losing to Fullerton College in last week’s Cuesta Rabobank Invitational, the women’s water polo team’s 13-game winning streak was over, until now.

The team played a steady game, rushing their opponents, Citrus College, to the center of the pool with speed. Their swimming skills were evident, as the opposing team struggled to keep up with their offense.

By the third quarter, City College managed a 10-1 lead.

Freshman Attacker Emma Kropp stood out. Credited by the head coach as being “the upcoming future of this program,” Kropp has remained optimistic about the rest of this season by working on improving her shooting, counterattack, and her six-on-five defense.

“Practice definitely pays off. Since we’ve been working so hard, everyone can expect us to come out stronger,” Kropp said.

Because this was their first and only home game of the season in the San Marcos High School pool, the team had some hurdles to get across.

They were provided with wall cages instead of floating cages in a pool that is five yards shorter than the standard.

“We play here because it’s what we have,” said Head Coach Brian Roth. “You make the best of what you have in life, you don’t get to pick everything. It’s nice when you win, but you learn more from a loss so it’s a little backwards, right?”

Even in the water, the Vaqueros were collected and vocal with each other and the coaches on the sideline.

“We’ve been really working on communication,” said Assistant Coach Makenzy Fowler.

“That’s just so fundamental, that we really have been striving to keep working on.”

The victory comes as their fourth in a row following the loss to Fullerton, but a win is not the goal for this team, according to Coach Roth.

“It’s not about water polo for us, water polo is just a modality to teach these lifelong lessons we want to learn through sport.”