A year ago, the Lodi High girls water polo program was embarking on a campaign that would end in a Tri-City Athletic League title and a trip to the Sac-Joaquin Section D-I semifinals.
At the same time, Tokay was finding out it wouldn’t field a team.
Now they’re both back for another try. Lodi is back ready to go again after graduating six out of seven starters, and Tokay is back with a program as the team enters the San Joaquin Athletic Association.
“I think the girls that are still there, that have stepped into the roles, they’re still figuring out how much they’re going to be depended on to step into those roles,” said Lodi coach Robert Elrod. “We’re not asking them to be the same players, but we are asking them to step up and be the players that they are.”
That previous group, with six players moving on to join either university of junior college teams, won a section D-I championship their sophomore year, but now it’s a new group’s turn to make their mark.
“Their passion for it is the only thing we’re asking these new girls to bring,” Elrod said. “And we’ll figure out how to bring that passion, and the current girls’ style of play, we’ll make it fit in. We just need them to compete.”
The lone returning starter from last year is junior center Harlan Woodard, who will be asked to be a catalyst for the Flames’ offense.
“The other girls will work off what she can and can’t do. It’s a big responsibility,” Elrod said. “It will be about matchups and mismatches and strategy. It’s a little more of a thinking game for us.”
But with the turnover of so many from a team that had chemistry, the expectations of success are still there.
“We’ve done a couple of, an indivudal team building exercise, and an all-fall athlete last Friday with food and fellowship,” Elrod said. “There’s traditions they’re picking up on. We had an intrasquad scrimmage, and I’m happy with the seven I thought it would be, and the underclassmen and JV girls, I was happy with them as well. These girls listen, learn and apply, and we believe in this group.”
Tokay is lacking experience in a different way, with co-head coaches Camden Perkins and Brian Kortuem resurrecting the boys and girls programs after the school didn’t field teams in 2023. The lone girl with playing experience remaining from the 2022 squad that went winless is Haley Kortuem.
But it wasn’t that long ago that the Tokay girls program was a force to be reckoned with — the team won a co-TCAL championship and lost in the section D-II championship in 2018 under coach Courtney Porter.
“We have a solid little core of three or four kids that have multiple years of playing for the club level for Big Valley or Tokay, so it’s not completely from scratch,” Perkins said. “We do have some returners for the girls, but the guys has been difficult. We’ve put flyers up, we did back to school night, but it’s definitely a challenge, breathing life back into a program that historically has been good.”
Tokay is making the move to the SJAA, where the other schools fielding programs are McNair and Edison.
“Hopefully we can get back one day to the TCAL, but where we are right now is good for us,” Perkins said. “We’re building a foundation right now.”