Water polo heads west

Much like other beach-seeking spring breakers, women's water polo is headed to a sunny locale next week. Instead of soaking up rays and lounging next to the pool, however, the team will be jumping right in and taking on some of the best teams in the nation.

While the mid-season trip to California is nothing new, this year it will be slightly different. Instead of trekking to Southern California to play a handful of San Diego and Los Angeles-area foes, Princeton will head north to challenge seven teams it has never played before.

The No. 16 Tigers (11-1) will open their 2006 spring break campaign on Saturday with games against unranked Santa Clara (11-6) and UC-Santa Cruz (6-10), and should post victories if they play to their potential.

The team's first major test will come the following day when it faces No. 9 San Jose State. While the Spartans are 7-9 on the season, they have consistently played top-ranked teams and recently lost a tough 6-4 match to No. 1 USC.

On Tuesday, Princeton will face two teams it knows relatively little about, Cal State-Monterey (7-10) and Sonoma State (10-4), before resting up for a demanding last weekend.

By far the greatest challenge will come on the final leg of the tour. The Tigers will first challenge No. 2 Stanford (12-3) on Friday, then No. 6 Cal-Berkeley (4-7) on Saturday.

Though the Tigers aren't entirely sure what to expect from the opponents they have never faced, they are prepared to use the trip as a mid-season benchmark.

"A lot of the teams on the East Coast are competitive, but our biggest challenge is when we go out to California and play teams we haven't seen before," senior driver Anne-Lise Maag said. "It's a true test to see how we will react to new situations."

Princeton will use this grueling schedule of away games to fine tune its offense. In contrast to the Tigers' strong, consistent defense, the team's offense has struggled at times. Nowhere was this more apparent than last weekend when the Tigers lost a surprising match to Maryland by a score of 5-1 and only narrowly defeated Bucknell, 7-6. Princeton will attempt to remedy this problem in California by making sure it executes the correct offense plays against opponents' defenses.

The Tigers will also take next week as an opportunity to build on the solid season they have had so far.

"We've been playing really well as a team up until last weekend, and our personalities have been meshing very effectively," Maag said. "I think we're all feeling very confident in regards to what our team can accomplish this season."