SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — The No. 17 UC Santa Barbara Women's Water Polo team got its 2025 campaign off on the right foot Saturday afternoon, scoring 48 goals across two games to sweep the season-opening doubleheader against UC Merced. The Gauchos won the opening game, 25-3, thanks to a five-goal haul by freshman Loretta Hovey and four goals each from Bella Mady and Juju Amaral. Mady had four more goals in the second goal of the day, but it was Annie Kuester who led the way in that one, scoring six times in Santa Barbara's 23-3 win.
 
FROM INTERIM HEAD COACH EMMA MYALL
"We weren't just scoring goals, we were getting better," Myall said. "The girls came in hot today in the first game and then we started making these little mistakes but the girls quickly adjusted, and I thought that was a really positive thing. They also got more patient throughout both games because we were scoring a lot of goals, which was great, but we wanted to work on the smaller things, so they started slowing the game down, making things happen, which was great."
 
HOW IT HAPPENED
The Gauchos came in so hot in the opening game that they produced their highest-scoring quarter of the day right off the bat, putting nine in the cage in the first quarter. Jojo Scheer was the scorer of Santa Barbara's first goal in 2025, though Hovey, Amaral and Morgan Hoffman soon got in on the act, giving the Gauchos a 4-0 lead inside three minutes. That may have been when the little mistakes started creeping in, as the Gauchos were kept off the scoreboard for a full minute and a half before Zoe Gabriel scored their fifth of the game. Athena Wigo and Bella Mady then recorded their first goals as Gauchos, with Wigo and Amaral adding a second goal each in the quarter. However, the Bobcats got on the board twice in the first, both times up a player after a Gaucho exclusion foul.
 
Santa Barbara buttoned things back up in the second and third quarters, with the defense and goalkeeper Madison Walker pitching a shutout over the middle two frames. At the same time, Hoffman, Hovey (twice), Amaral, Mady (twice), Molly Souza, Scheer, Lainey Weintre, and Hadde Hall all found the back of the net to give Santa Barbara a 19-2 lead heading into the final quarter.
 
The Bobcats scored once in the fourth, but six more Gaucho goals from Hoffman, Mady, Amaral, Hovey, Aidan Flynn and Hovey again sealed the result for Santa Barbara. Walker finished with nine saves in goal, including a penalty stop; she would hand the reigns over to Ava Donleavy for game two.
 
Donleavy and the defense started the second game of the day great, keeping UC Merced off the board for the entire first half. At the other end of the pool, a trio of Gauchos who had sat and rested in the first game were getting their 2025 seasons off to a fast start. Kuester scored her first goal of the year on Santa Barbara's first possession, and Imani Clemons followed that up with two goals in two tries. Isabel Valaika got her first goal of the season in the quarter as well, then Kuester scored her second and Christina Mullane opened her account for the year to give Santa Barbara a 6-0 lead at the buzzer.
 
Gaucho young guns Weintre and Hall picked up where they had left off from game one with a goal each inside the first minute of the second quarter, then Kayla Matthies drew and converted a five-meter penalty for her first Gaucho goal. Valaika added her second goal of the game in the quarter, with Kuester scoring twice and Mady adding lucky number 13 for Santa Barbara before halftime.
 
Third quarter goals from Mullane and Clemons got the Gaucho lead up to 15-0 before the Bobcats broke the shutout. UC Merced got a second goal in the quarter, but two goals from Mady plus one each from Hoffman and Matthies kept the Gauchos' momentum moving firmly forward. Kuester scored twice more in the fourth to bring her total up to six on the day, with Hoffman adding her second and Mady her fourth in the quarter as well. Merced scored the final, though ultimately meaningless, goal of the day, denting the twine with just one second left to play.
 
UP NEXT
The Gauchos are off on their first of two big trips east next week, traveling to Bloomington for the Indiana Classic, Jan. 25-26. Santa Barbara will face Carthage College, McKendree, the hosting Indiana and Salem while in the Hoosier State.