Hebron water polo will compete in the Texas Cup in the LISD West Aquatic Center on April 1 at 4:30 p.m. and April 2 at 8 a.m. Hebron will compete against teams from schools across Texas.

Coach Donzie Lilly on the boy’s team are seniors Tyler Davis and captain Gray Hagood. On the girls’ side, the leading scorers are senior captain Kaitlyn Hoang and sophomore Avery Gallucci.

“It’s going to be a really fast-paced and hard tournament,” Hoang said. “To prepare we have been going to every festival and tournament that counts toward what happens in April, with the mindset of ‘this [is] a new game.’ If we were upset about a game before or were coming off of a high from a win, it’s like, ‘let’s restart.’ We don’t want to go in cocky about it, but also we don’t want to get upset during the game. So [we want] to go into the game with a clean slate and play our best.”

This will be water polo’s first time going to a normal Texas Cup, since the 2020 events were canceled due to COVID-19 and last year had restrictions.

“I think the kids grow and learn a lot from some of their losses, while taking away areas that we can work on improving,” Lilly said. “We’ve had a lot of close games on the boys’ side with Flower Mound and Marcus being the teams we’re looking to beat this season, and on the girls’ side, Prosper and Keller. We have our goals in mind, and I think we’re going to find a lot of success when it comes to the post season tournament.”

Lilly said the tournament will include powerhouses from all over the state. Senior Isaac Nguyen said he is really excited to go against Flower Mound. 

“We’ve been working on a type of defense that shuts down the center player because Flower Mound and Marcus have really good center players,” Nguyen said. “We’ve made much more growth with Flower Mound. We lost by one and two goals this season [against Flower Mound,] but last year we lost by a lot more. So we’ve definitely grown from years prior.”

With the little time between games, Lilly sais he has been sharpening the team’s offensive and defensive sides of the ball as the team builds toward regionals on April 22 and 23.

“I think the boys have a shot at getting into the top four,” Lilly said. “They’d have to beat Flower Mound then crossover to St. Marks, so I think if they’d beat Flower Mound and lose to St. Marks, they’d probably be fourth. If they beat Flower Mound and St. Marks, they would be playing for first and second, so I’d like to see them in the top four. Then I’d like to see the girls in the top six. So if they could steal a win away from one of the teams in the group play and then see what happens in the crossover, top fifth or sixth will be great.”