Water polo opens with a splash

That’s how you start as the No. 6 team in the country.

The Hawaii water polo team opened the 2019 season in fine fashion by dispatching No. 22 Marist 17-3 on Saturday afternoon at the Duke Kahanamoku Aquatic Complex.

UH did that despite working in several freshmen and playing without its No. 2 player, Elyse Lemay-Lavoie, who just left for Brazil for competition with the Canadian national team.

Senior Irene Gonzalez of Spain picked up where she left off from her All-America junior campaign, scoring three times. Freshman attacker Maxine Schaap of the Netherlands scored a match-high four times.

Another freshman, Alba Bonamusa Boix of Spain, had a hat trick, including this one here:

No. 6 #HawaiiWWP puts a 17-3 hurting on No. 22 Marist in the teams’ season opener at the Duke Kahanamoku Complex. pic.twitter.com/0llQfhMw7b

— Hawaii Warrior World (@hawaiiwworld) January 19, 2019

Coach Maureen Cole was able to rotate players in and out of the pool extensively.

“We’re still figuring out who is playing best with who,” Gonzalez said. “I think when we get to know each other better, and when we know how each other plays, we’re going to be pretty good. I think we have a very talented team so we can definitely do great things.”

After it was tied at 1 after a quarter, the Wahine dominated the second and third periods to win going away.

“I think it was a solid start,” Cole said. “The immediate start was a little jittery, a lot of bad passes. Maybe that was a little bit of nerves and excitement all combined. Once we settled down a little bit, our defense was stellar. I think there were a couple of miscommunications, but we’ve really been focused on being organized and we did well defensively. Actually, our speed took it to them, so that was good to see.”

It was an impressive showing from a team with Big West title aspirations (and a group that came ever-so-close last year, losing to UC Irvine in triple overtime in the title game after sweeping the regular season). The Wahine had previously encountered Marist in the Collegiate Cup in Irvine in November, and didn’t take that win as convincingly, 15-10.

“We didn’t play that good. We had a lot of mistakes,” Gonzalez recalled. “It was the first game of the season now and we didn’t know how we’re gonna start. What was it gonna be playing against them again? They’re a physical team. We didn’t know if we’d be OK countering. But as soon as the game started and everything, we looked at each other and it was good and we knew it was our game.”

Here's another #HawaiiWWP score from earlier. Sophomore Lalelei Mata'afa goes to work for one of her two goals in the Rainbow Wahine season-opening win over Marist. pic.twitter.com/A26x3EoRK9

— Hawaii Warrior World (@hawaiiwworld) January 20, 2019

Said Cole of Gonzalez’s leadership role, “She’s gotta be the example-setter at all times. And she knows that. She does a good job of teaching the nuances of all our little things, our system. She’s talking to (the younger players) all the time, trying to bring them along as quickly as we can, because we do have a lot of talented, capable people that just need to learn how we do it here.”

UH was to play Sonoma State at 6 p.m. Saturday night, then close the round-robin tournament against No. 19 San Diego State at 10 a.m. Sunday morning. The first big challenge is next weekend, when No. 5 Arizona State comes to town for a stand-alone game.

UPDATE: UH beat Sonoma State 16-2, with four goals from Lalelei Mata’afa and three from Gonzalez.

UPDATE: The Wahine improved to 3-0 by defeating SDSU 17-9 today to win the Rainbow Invite. Gonzalez scored five times, and Femke Aan and Mata’afa each had a hat trick.

A couple more shots from today: