Girls water polo: Scouting the MSL championship game

Posted May 04, 2016 1:00 am

By Aaron Gabriel

When: 6 p.m. Thursday

Where: Fremd

Who: East Division champ Prospect (14-8) vs. West Division champ Fremd (21-6). Both teams finished 9-1 against their MSL divisional opponents.

At a glance: Fremd is No. 17 and Prospect checks in at No. 25 in the most recent state rankings from illpolo.com. It's Fremd's first appearance in the league championship since 2012, when the Vikings beat Wheeling 10-3 in coach Ray Roth's first season in charge. Prospect last appeared in 2011 and fell to Fremd 13-2; this will be coach Natalie Tucker's first trip to the title game as a head coach.

Scouting report: Both teams put a premium on defense and have players skilled enough to allow opponents few opportunities, and then manage their own possessions effectively. And both teams have terrific goaltenders in Fremd's Emma Jeronimus and Prospect's Lauren Broz. The Vikings have had success with a variety of scorers, among them Sarah Coombes, Emily Kini, Becca Rutkowski, Karolina Urban, Paulina Pappas and Jenessa Islas-Parker. Prospect's top scorers are usually Gracie Dix and Colleen Doyle, but the Knights have a knack for getting 1 or 2 more goals out of a long list of players. The edge in this one goes to whichever team can keep exclusions of its own players to a minimum while generating quality scoring chances.

- Aaron Gabriel

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