Girls water polo: How a blowout loss started Stevenson on its quest for a state title four-peat
Amid a 25-1 season, in which winning has been boundless for Stevenson’s girls water polo team, the most memorable moment for senior captains Olivia Spieth and Elsa Kusevskis was not one of their wins. It was their lone loss.
On March 14, the second game of the season, the Patriots took on Punahou School of Hawaii and lost 21-5. By the fourth quarter, coach Jeff Wimer, who has led Stevenson to seven state championships and finished in the top three in the state in every season since 2015, benched all of his starters.
“I can picture it very vividly,” said Spieth, last year’s Illinois Player of the Year and a first-team All-American.
Now the Patriots take a 24-game win streak into senior night Wednesday against Naperville North, which is 25-0.
“Our second game of the season was a little bit of a rough start, but I think we’ve come back from that and grew as a team from it,” said Kusevskis, the team’s goalie, who is committed to play at Augustana College. “I think we learned what our weaknesses were.”
Stevenson is on a mission to become the first girls water polo program in IHSA history to win four consecutive state titles. Over the prior three seasons, the Patriots claimed state titles and totaled a cumulative 105-2-1 record.
While Stevenson has become a dynasty, the success wasn’t instant. Wimer became the coach in 1998, but it wasn’t until 2015 that the Patriots finished atop the state.
“We’ve had a lot of success, but it took time,” Wimer said. “It didn’t happen overnight. I had to change a culture at Stevenson back in the late ’90s, early 2000s. It took time, but moving forward, in 2015, we won our state championship at Stevenson, and we built on that.”
Wimer has instituted a demanding practice schedule to maximize his team’s potential. In addition to early-morning practice 5:45 a.m.-7:30 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, the team also meets after school 3:45 p.m.-6:45 p.m. on days without games.
Through the hard work, Wimer has found that iron sharpens iron, leading to constant improvement within the program.
“Every year, I work on depth for the next,” Wimer said. “I’m always looking toward the future. Most of our bench, there’s a freshman, a bunch of sophomores, and a few juniors, but they’re always training against the higher-level girls on our team, which has been cyclical now for years. A lot of times, our practices are more spirited and competitive than games we play in.”
After the Patriots’ 36-0 season last year, the team graduated just two seniors, leading to its success this year. Spieth and Kusevskis are in their second year as captains for the squad after being four-year varsity players.
For each of the past four years, Spieth and Kusevskis have heard Wimer repeat the same message — their goal is to play on the last day of the season. Their goal is very much within reach.
But for Spieth, who will take a gap year to play water polo professionally in Spain next year, Stevenson’s success goes far beyond what happens on game days. It’s rooted in the consistent work they put in every single day.
“If that is something that we accomplish, I feel like it should be more than just the name of getting a four-peat — even now, just getting a three-peat,” Spieth said. “We want people to know all the hard work and effort we truly put in to get these titles.”