After the conclusion of an admittedly up-and-down regular season, the Augustana women’s water polo team looked to put together a strong final stretch and finish what had already been a storybook first few years for the program. If the Vikings can band together and have a strong close-out to the season, they can claim their dominance in the Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) tournament for a third-straight season. 

Their weekend kicked off against the fifth-seeded Penn State Behrend, a team they had already bested this season, 10-3. Going against a familiar opponent is a tricky endeavor, especially a team you’ve already beaten before, as you start to look past them and can get caught flat-footed. 

The Vikings made sure that this wouldn’t be an issue, as they knew the threat that a team like Penn State Behrend could pose. Senior Maggie Caliendo noted how she and her teammates like to counteract that mindset, instead treating their opening-round matchup as intensely as they would a championship match. 

“When going against a team we’ve beaten before, we can’t think it’ll be easy to beat them,” Caliendo said. “The mindset we need is to treat it like a championship game. We’re not going to play down, we’re going to play our game.”

The Vikings certainly came out and played the way they intended, as they were able to jump out to a 9-0 lead heading into halftime before snatching a 17-4 win, pushing them through to the semi-finals matchup against an opponent they were waiting to see: #5 Austin College.

The history between Augustana and Austin is quite extensive, especially given the relatively recent introduction of the Augustana women’s water polo team. The two teams have faced each other in not only each of the past three CWPA championship matchups but also each of three nationals visits, with Augustana holding a 4-2 advantage in those specific games. 

That dominance appeared shaken as the Vikings headed into their matchup with Austin having outlasted them in a 14-13 loss just a month prior. The Vikings would need to come through and prove that they still had the Kangaroos’ number. In the flurry of multiple close losses, it would have been easy for the Vikings to hang their head, but senior captain and recent recipient of All-CWPA first-team honors Charlotte Newport spoke glowingly of the resiliency the Vikings held and how they were able to band together to finish out the season.

“Those are both the toughest games and the best to play in, because the more competitive it is, the more fun it is,” Newport said. “I’ve been really proud of the way that our girls have attacked every possession, moved on from every mistake, and not let it get to us. We’re still fully confident we can win out this weekend. Those close games are just building our resiliency.”

That resiliency shone through, as Augustana secured a dominant 10-5 victory over Austin College. With their win, the Vikings were one step closer to securing a third-straight CWPA championship, but their next match would prove to be no easier than the previous one, as they would be going against an equally storied rival, Washington & Jefferson College. 

Washington & Jefferson was another great task in the regular season for the Vikings, as they would fall to them in a 9-8 contest not long after their loss to Austin. Following a tough stretch of the season, the Vikings needed something to get them going, and senior captain and All-CWPA second team recipient Lizzie Pelzman points to this point in time when the season looked to turn around. 

“​​This year, we’ve lost to a couple of teams that we’ve either never lost to or have at least had a really good winning percentage against,” Pelzman said. “For a lot of us seniors, we were a little shocked and frustrated at the thought of not making it to nationals for the first time as a program. After our close loss to W&J, we were frustrated and decided to have a team bonding meeting following the tournament. We were able to get together and speak on the losses of the season, but we were also able to highlight that we shouldn’t be frustrated with any one person or any one play. It’s an hour-long game, and there’s no one defining moment. We just really needed to focus on channeling that frustration into drive.”

While Pelzman and many of her teammates run the same philosophy of using previous games as motivation, head coach Ryan Pryor prefers to learn from the previous game and then move his focus onto the next matchup. It’s hard to argue with either, as both of those philosophies have led the Vikings to immense success in their short existence. 

“I think the last thing I want us to think about is what happened in the previous game,” coach Pryor said. “Each game is a new game, and we can’t allow ourselves to get caught up in what happened last time. It’s the same for opponents we’ve beaten this year, as well as for opponents we may face who we had lost the previous game to; we don’t want to get caught up in that either.” 

Heading into a championship game against a team you’ve already faced and fell short against this season can be nerve-racking. Still, after facing the adversity the Vikings had, they were ready for anything W&J were willing to throw at them. Sophomore Hailey Sherman spoke to the confidence that arises when coming off of back-to-back wins, especially of that magnitude, and how she and her teammates planned to use that momentum. 

“We go into each game really confident that we’re going to win,” Sherman said. “So we just make sure to focus on the small things that can get lost in bigger games, and it allows us to clean up some smaller stuff, so we can really focus on the bigger picture.”

After two momentum-stacking wins against familiar foes, the Vikings would have to come out swinging against a talented W&J team that had already bested them. Augustana jumped out to a 5-4 lead as they entered halftime, looking to distance themselves from the Presidents as the second half kicked off. 

Senior Annie Opal Dickson and her teammates knew the threat that W&J posed, but with the championship in their grasp, there was no way the Vikings would allow it to slip through their hands. Augustana would outduel the Presidents, claiming a 10-7 victory in a roaring Anne Greve Lund Natatorium, putting themselves on a short list of programs to win three straight CWPA tournament championships. 

“It was so exciting this time just because this wasn’t something we were expected to do,” said Opal Dickson, whose goal in the championship stretched the lead for the Vikings in the second period. “We came in as the fourth seed, and we had already lost to them [W&J] earlier in the year, but we just had the thought of, ‘We’ve done this before, we’ve made it to nationals before, and we know that it’s attainable for us.’ It was something that we knew we could do.”

With their win, the Vikings have clinched a spot at the USA Water Polo Division-III National Tournament and will have a chance to finish their season in storybook fashion.