Rainbow Wahine push
Bruins to the brink

Top-ranked UCLA escapes with
a 7-6 win over Hawaii in the NCAA
championship semis

The 23rd time was nearly the charm for the Hawaii water polo team.

The Rainbow Wahine came close to notching their first-ever win over No. 1 UCLA after 22 losses, but the Bruins managed to escape with a 7-6 victory yesterday in the semifinals of the NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship at Ann Arbor, Mich.

UH's Monika Kruszona, Iefke Van Belkum and Anna Sieprath scored two goals each, and goalie Meike De Nooy stopped 11 shots as the Wahine attempted to hand UCLA its first loss of the season.

However, Kristina Kunkel's power-play goal with 1:43 left broke a 6-6 tie and sent the Bruins (32-0) into today's national championship match against Stanford at the University of Michigan's Canham Natatorium.

Although the Wahine were tantalizingly close to scoring a historic win and advancing to their first national final, UH coach Michel Roy was anything but disappointed with his team's performance against a Bruin squad stocked with Olympians and national-team members.

"We played the game of our lives," Roy said. "We played great and we had a good shot at winning, which is amazing in itself.

"We played most likely our best water polo ever. I have a very young team and it's a lot of fun, a lot of promise."

Fourth-seeded UH (21-10) ends its season today in the third-place match against USC. The Trojans, the defending NCAA champions, lost to Stanford 5-4 in yesterday's other semifinal.

UH had lost all three previous meetings with UCLA this season, including a 6-5 defeat on Feb. 26. The experience kept the Wahine from entering the pool awed by the Bruins' reputation.

"I have a bunch of young girls that play with confidence and they are not intimidated by the fact that there's five Olympians and they're UCLA," Roy said. "They just play the game and that's very promising for me. I'm very pleased with my girls, very proud of them."

UCLA took a 2-0 lead in the first quarter, but UH's freshman tandem of Kruszona and Van Belkum gave Hawaii a 4-3 lead to close the first period and took the advantage into halftime following a scoreless second period. It was the first time this season UCLA trailed at halftime.

"We outplayed them, our defense was incredible, we were all over the place," Roy said. "Keeping them down to seven goals is an amazing thing.

"(De Nooy) played great and it does help with the defense. She was in the back of the cage stopping everything that comes by."

UH led most of the way until Thalia Munro's fast-break goal gave the Bruins their first lead at 6-5 with 25 seconds left in the third quarter. Sieprath knotted the score again with 4:11 left in the final period, but Kunkel gave UCLA the lead back with a goal from close range with less than 2 minutes left.

UH had three more possessions to try to tie the match, but came up short.

The Wahine will try to end its landmark season on a high with today's match against second-seeded USC. After yesterday's effort, Roy hopes his team has enough left in the tank to bounce back against the Trojans. The match is set for 9 a.m. Hawaii time.

"I think the strength of this team is the ability to play one game at a time and enjoy it, play with confidence," he said.