SAN ANTONIO — Another great water polo season came to an end for the Boerne Champion boys team last Saturday at Davis Natatorium.
Champion finished second in the state to earn silver medals after they were defeated by Austin Westlake for the 6A state championship, 15-8. They ended the year at 27-5, and it was their first loss since Sept. 19 when they lost to — you guessed it — Westlake.
Chargers coach Scott Slay gave credit to Westlake for winning the title and said that second in the state is nothing to hang their heads about.
“Westlake is one of the best teams I’ve seen in the last 25 years,” he said about the Chaps that went 31-1 this year. “Second in the state is a big accomplishment.”
It was a slow start for the Chargers after they fell behind 8-0 by halftime. Champion played much better in the second half and outscored the Chaparrals, 8-7, but the deficit was just too much to overcome.
“I think we came out a little nervous, but I think in the second half we were probably the better team,” Slay said. “In the first half we were freaking out and in the second half we calmed down. We had too many turnovers early on and turnovers kill you.” Despite being double teamed the whole match, senior Julius Hoxhaj led the Chargers with 4 goals, while Grant Perkins had 3 goals and Landon Muenchow added a goal to round out the scoring. EJ Altermatt finished with 2 assists and 4 steals and Jackson Hankins was in goal and came up with 14 saves.
“They did a good job on Julius, but other kids stepped up and we had some good goals,” Slay said.
This is the fifth year that UIL has played water polo and the Chargers have won the region and played at state all five seasons. They’ve returned to Boerne with silver, silver, bronze, bronze and now silver.
The Houston and Dallas regions seem to be ahead of the South Texas region in water polo, except for Champion, but Slay said the San Antonio area and South Texas are catching up.
“We have a great group of youth kids coming through Boerne and the future is bright in San Antonio, he said. “That’s why I came here, to take on that challenge. San Antonio is closing the gap.”
Saturday’s match was emotional for Coach Slay since it was the last time he coached his son Baylor in water polo with both being a part of Champion.
“That’s been 10 years in the making,” he said. “The last 48 hours (prior to Saturday) were hard. Honestly, I cried during warmups watching my own kid.”
State Semis
The Chargers never trailed in Friday’s match against League City Clear Creek and went on to eliminate the two-time defending state champs in the state semis, 17-12.
Champion was up 4-3 at the end of the first quarter and then outscored the Wildcats in the second, 8-2, and held a 12-5 lead at halftime.
It was pretty much even in the second half as Clear Creek scored 7 goals and the Chargers tallied 5 goals as they focused more on killing clock than on scoring in the fourth quarter.
There was a measure of revenge in last Friday’s win for Champion since Clear Creek beat the Chargers at state last year by the same score of 17-12 and also defeated the Chargers earlier in the season in a tournament, 12-11.
Julius Hoxhaj led the team with 6 goals, EJ Altermatt had 5 goals, Grant Perkins added 3 goals, while Baylor Slay, Landon Muenchow and Nicholas Mendoza all tallied 1 goal. Perkins had 7 assists and Knox Armstrong came up with 2 steals.
Jackson Hankins was in goal and tallied 23 saves on 35 shots.
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