A young USA women’s water polo team that included Santa Barbara area players Paige Hauschild, Abbi Hill, Ryann Neushul and Jewel Roemer fell to Australia, 10-7, in the championship game of the 2017 FINA Women’s Intercontinental Tournament at UC Davis on Sunday.
The loss was the USA Women’s Senior National Team’s first since May of 2016.
A day after rallying to defeat Australia in a pool-play shootout, undefeated Team USA found themselves in a deficit once again, trailing 2-0 after the first quarter and 3-0 in the second. They came alive late in the second when Neushul assisted tournament MVP Melissa Seidemann for the first USA goal of the game. Jewel Roemer scored from outside with 1:25 left in the half to pull USA within a goal at 3-2.
Team USA tied the game 3-3 early in the third on a power play, but Australia responded with three straight goals to take a 6-3 lead heading into the fourth quarter. In the first minute of the fourth quarter, Neushul assisted a Paige Hauschild goal off a cross pass that ignited a second USA comeback. A penalty shot by Roemer, Hauschild’s second goal and a shot by Olympian Aria Fischer helped propel the Americans to a 7-7 tie with 3:04 to play in the game.
Australia crushed any chance of a repeat USA victory by scoring the final three goals of the game to pull away.
Team USA went 3 of 8 on power plays and 1 onf 2 on penalty shots while Australia was 1/5 on power plays and 1/1 on penalty shots.
Commenting on his young team’s performance, Team USA coach Adam Krikorian, said: “Hopefully they learned a lot and can now go back to their clubs trying to work on the things that we’ve talked about and the lessons that they’ve learned. In the end, it was great; I’m really happy with how the team listened, how receptive they were, and how they competed. They were a little nervous but that is to expected for some really young kids playing at the senior team level.”
This was the senior national team debut for Neushul, Hill and Roemer, a junior, sophomore and freshman, respectively, at Dos Pueblos High. Hauschild, a senior at San Marcos and bound for USC, played for Team USA at the Intercontinental Tournament in New Zealand two years ago. The older sisters of Hill (Sami) and Neushul (Kiley) played on the national team that won the gold medal at the Olympic Games last summer in Brazil.
Team USA’s Senior Women’s Team accomplished its goal of qualifying for the 2017 FINA World League Final to be held in Shanghai, China from June 6-11. Other qualifiers include Australia, Russia, Hungary, and The Netherlands. Host nation China will also compete.
In other FINA Intercontinental action, Canada claimed the bronze medal defeating Japan 5-2 and Kazakhstan earned fifth place with a 14-7 win over China.