The girls’ JV and varsity water polo teams celebrated the end of the season during the women’s water polo banquet in the cafeteria on Nov. 20 at 5:30 p.m.

The banquet started off with dinner prepared by the culinary competition team, a meal comprised of salad, fajitas with chicken and vegetables, refried beans, rice, and chocolate mousse for dessert. Iced tea and lemonade were served as well.

“It’s a really Mexican-themed menu,” culinary competition team captain Mariana Avila said. “It took us two days to prepare food for this banquet.”

At 6:02 p.m., head varsity coach Ms. Kari Ustaszewski shut off the lights and began a slideshow prepared by Mr. Greg Daley, whose daughter Christina Daley is on the varsity team. The slideshow had pictures of the girls during water polo games and practices. Some pictures were comical, and others carried more sentiment.

After the slideshow, Ustaszewski promptly took over the microphone and addressed the water polo players and their families. She discussed the past season and outlined how awards would be distributed.

“We are gonna start with the JV team. We wanna recognize you for your awesome season thus far. Coach Rachel and I are proud of how far as a team you guys went, from the beginning of the very first day to the end of the season,” Ustaszewski said.

Head junior varsity and assistant varsity coach Rachel Holm then presented awards to the junior varsity players. Once that was done, Ustaszewski presented the varsity awards, with Emma Towslee awarded Offensive Player of the Year, Christina Daley awarded Defensive Player of the Year, and Taylor Sienkiewicz awarded the Coach’s Award.

“I was really happy that my team voted for me for something like that and I felt really honored because it’s the kind of award that someone gets for rallying the team together and just being an overall great player,” Taylor Sienkiewicz said.

Towslee, Sienkiewicz, and Amanda Puleo were each gifted a picture frame with memorable pictures from water polo by Christina Daley as homage to their senior year.

To show their appreciation, Sienkiewicz and Towslee gifted the two coaches with flowers.

Ustaszewski said, “The end of the year banquet is a nice closure for a very driven season and it gives a lot of recognition and celebration to all the effort that is put in. You start in August and in some cases people are playing year-round, but you go all the way through so it’s the culmination of the end of the year and it’s nice to recognize everyone’s efforts, especially for the seniors because this is their last year playing water polo.”

by KAVLEEN SINGH