Hood River Valley water polo teams show improvement

HOOD RIVER — The Hood River Valley (HRV) boys and girls water polo teams have faced a number of strong Class 6A opponents during their regular season schedule, and it’s had a major impact on their record as they’ve struggled to win games so far this season.

The three-time Oregon Class 5A defending state champion Eagle girls squad showed some improvement last week when they won one-of-three games. The Eagles (1-5 North Division, 3-17 overall) won, 13-11, over the David Douglas High Scots (3-3 Mt. Hood League) on Oct. 7 at the Hood River Aquatic Center.

The Eagles then faced Class 6A and No. 2-ranked Barlow (14-12) and they lost, 16-3, Oct. 9 in Gresham. They followed with a 22-2 road loss Oct. 11 to the No. 4-ranked Class 5A Summit High Storm (7-4) in Bend.

The Eagles play their next game, Oct. 16 at 5 p.m. at David Douglas in Portland. They’ll play their next home game Oct. 21 at 5 p.m. versus the Mountain View High Cougars.

The HRV boys faced two solid Class 6A Mt. Hood League opponents last week. The Eagles (1-4 league, 3-12 overall), guided by second-year Coach Cael Price, lost 16-7 at home Oct. 7 to the David Douglas High Scots (1-1 league, 4-6 overall). On Oct. 9, the Eagles faced Barlow (2-0 MHL, 13-6 overall) and they lost ,15-4, in Gresham. The Eagles are in fourth place in the six-team Central League standings. Summit (3-0 league, 10-6 overall) is in first place.

“We’ve played a lot of games recently and we beat Redmond a couple of weeks ago in Redmond, which was a pretty big win,” said Price. “We played a pretty evenly matched game with Bend recently, too. We’ll play some pretty important upcoming games vs. Mt. Hood League teams. We played teams in that league once already and now we’ll play them again. We’ve shown a lot of improvement recently and we’re hoping to have an improved performance against those teams this week.”

The Eagle boys play Oct. 16 at 6 p.m. at David Douglas. HRV hosts the Mountain View High Cougars (1-0 league, 5-6 overall) on Oct. 21 at 6 p.m. in a Central League contest at the Hood River Aquatic Center.

“We’re hoping to put up a really tough game against Mountain View to help us improve our seeding for the upcoming playoffs,” said Price. “The next two weeks are very big for us in terms of getting results to go our way to help us move up in the standings.”