By Tom Terzulli
With its final home game in the books and the Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Championship on the horizon, Fordham Water Polo hit the road for its final two matches of the regular season, splitting the pair 1-1.
The first trip was a short one, to Staten Island to take on the Wagner Seahawks in a battle of the boroughs. In what was a close encounter throughout, the Rams outlasted their Staten Island counterparts to take the match 8-6.
That result came in spite of Fordham being down several important players: “We were short a couple of players, some of the guys recovering from serious injuries,” said head coach Bill Harris. “So, everybody had to do their job and we just told them to come out and play with an intensity and they did.”
Neither squad could gain any separation in the first half as the score was even at three after one and deadlocked at five at the end of the half.
Senior R.J. Simmons found the back of the net with 6:35 remaining in the third to put Fordham up 6-5. After the Seahawks tied it at the 4:12 mark, freshman Jake Miller-Tolt scored his second goal of the day to put a 7-6 Rams advantage on the board going into the final quarter. There, the Rams tacked on another marker with Miller-Tolt’s final goal and staved off Wagner to end the contest.
Defense was the catalyst, as the Rams held the Seahawks to just eight goals. “We knew they only had two or three big scorers,” said Harris. “We knew that if we could stop them, we could control the game. We didn’t score a lot of goals, we won with defense.”
The Rams would need all the defense they could get in their final regular season matchup, a date with the 13th-ranked Bucknell Bison. They did not get it, giving up 18 goals to the Bison in an 18-13 defeat. “The result proved we could score, but we need to defend better against a high level team…against a top 15 team, you just can’t give them looks because they put the ball in the goal at a higher rate than most teams,” said Harris.
The Bison were putting the ball in the goal early and often, going up 5-2 after the first frame and 9-4 at the half.
It was in the third that the Rams’ offensive prowess came to light. Miller-Tolt led the five score outburst with another three goals, but Fordham also gave up six tallies in the period to make it 15-9 Bison.
In spite of Miller-Tolt finding the net another three times, within five would be the closest the Rams would get.
Miller-Tolt culminated a stellar regular season campaign with a season-high eight goals, while fellow freshman Tristen Knoflik contributed a pair. Sophomores Magnus Sims and Samuel Varshinsky and freshman George Maltby rounded out the scoring.
The Rams finished up the year with a 14-12 overall record and a 4-6 mark in conference. Next week, they will match up with Wagner once again— this time in the first round of the Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Championship at, coincidentally enough, Bucknell University. The players will hit the pool at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 18.
