Men’s water polo wins conference title

Palomar’s Men’s water polo team caught fire at the right time as they took the Pacific Coast Athletic Conference title.

First-year head coach Kody Moffatt guided them to a 5-1 conference record with a 12-14 overall record.

“We had a lot of tournaments back to back to back, just getting away from the competition and more time to practice together I think that our team atmosphere both offensively and defensively just started clicking,” Moffatt said. “We got a couple great wins and got the momentum going in the right direction.”

This is the men’s second consecutive conference title that they’ve won. Sophomore attacker Dylan Van Horn was apart of last year’s team so he got a taste of both coaches.

“Kody brings a lot more to the table…knows what we need because he’s more this generation…he played fairly recently he’s more up to date on everything,” Van Horn said.

The Comets had their ups and downs and couldn’t seem to find themselves early on in the season as they went on a four game losing streak twice in the season. They started out conference play 4-0 only to lose to Saddleback College by a score of 3-6, but picked it right back up, finishing on a two game win streak with a dominating win over San Diego Mesa of a score 14-5 and a win over Grossmont to seal their conference title heading into playoffs.

About the spark that fueled the Comets at the end Van Horn said “We were just ready to play, we knew overall we had the better players…everyone on our team can shoot and score”.

That spark helped them reach the 10th seed in the playoffs. They will go up against 7th seeded Cuesta, they previously lost to Cuesta by two goals early in the season, but will look to bounce back.

“Heading into playoffs…we faced Cuesta before, we lost by two. I think we can bring more to the table, that was mid-season and we’ve grown a lot since mid-season and we can do a lot better and get away with a win,” Van Horn said.

Against Cuesta early in the season the Comets only scored one goal in the first half, so they will look to come out the gates more aggressively in the first half. Palomar plays Cuesta on Thursday Nov. 9 at 10:15 a.m. at San Luis Obispo College in the first round of the playoffs.