Coyotes close season with two victories

Before a victory over Madera South, the Madera Coyotes girls water polo team needed an overtime goal to pick up a 13-12 victory over the Edison-Fresno Tigers.

Junior Emily Goertzen scored the game-winning goal with about a minute left in overtime for the win Tuesday. The Coyotes followed the win with a 19-1 drubbing of Madera South on Thursday to close out the regular season.

Junior Ceaira Chavira led the Coyotes with four goals. Freshman Selynna Rosales and senior Jessica Diaz each scored two goals.

The match started with all of the Madera seniors in the pool.

“I was super proud of the seniors because those weren’t our regular starters and they were the ones to score with freshman Tara Goertzen taking a very nice shot on a power play,” head coach Erik Baymiller said.

Senior Elizabeth Lomeli added a goal inside the near corner in the first quarter.

“At that point, the game got very tactical with every movement in the water being absolutely critical,” Baymiller said.

Edison came back in the second half and took a four goal lead into the fourth quarter.

“We were down and mentally in the dumps,” Baymiller said. “A couple of minutes into the fourth, Rosales shot some life back into the team with a wonderful goal.”

The Coyotes cut the lead to one with 1:10 left in the match.

“Again, it was very tactical and the first clear chance we had was with a couple of seconds left,” Baymiller said. “They double teamed on the outside and left Chavira wide open on the top. She worked the goalie and with about a tenth of a second left, shot and sff speed shot, which had the goalie sitting and watching aswe tied the score.

In the overtime, Edison jumped out to a two goal lead.

“At that point, we really got our heads into the game and I thought it was going to go to sudden death because we were bring the score back,” Baymiller said.

With 1:12 left on the clock, the Coyotes tied the match at 12.

“After that, we planned on killing the time off and go to sudden death,” Baymiller said. “But, we got a qucik steal that opened up a counter attack resulting into an Edison ejection. We set up Emily Goertzen and she fired a rocket to the top corner for the eventual game-winning goal with 50 seconds left. We defended and won the game.”