Pali High water polo player Jacob Lazaruk talks about this season’s varsity returners.
Coming off back-to-back City Section championships, the Palisades High boys varsity water polo team enters the season as a heavy favorite to three-peat. And why not? Head coach Adam Blakis is armed with perhaps his best squad since re-establishing the program four years ago.
With junior attackers Zach Senator, Mitchell Kim and Kian Lotfi, sophomore hole setters Gabby Feizbakhsh and Lucas Silva and sophomore set defender Jacob Lazaruk starting, the Dolphins should fill their opponents’ nets with frequency. A pair of solid goalies along with sophomore Quinn Godfredsen and senior Griffin Koffman give the team depth at every position.
“We beat the starters last year and we’ve got a much deeper team,” Lazaruk said Friday. “We just completed Hell Week, which is really strenuous for all of us, and some of us are out with injuries right now but we should have a good season. We’re like a family — we started together and we’re going to finish together.”
Kim, the top scorer for Westside Aquatics‘ 16U team at the Junior Olympics in July, knows the Dolphins enter the season as the team to beat in the City but he believes this year’s group is even stronger: “We’re a much better team. What we lack in size we make up for in IQ and with conditioning.”
Pali High opens the season September 5-6 at the Conejo Classic, where the Dolphins took third last year. They host the Westside Classic on Sept. 19-20 and are also slated to play in the South Bay Tournament in Manhattan Beach in October.
“It’s really important for us to win City and get our third win in a row, because here at Pali we create legacies and we’re looking forward to creating that Pali powerhouse so that when other teams see our name they’re afraid of us,” Lazaruk added. “I think this year we’re out to kill and we’re ready to win. That’s what we do at Pali — we win.”
— Steve Galluzzo
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