This weekend the Men’s Water Polo team hosted their annual Alumni Tournament at Rolfs Aquatics, with Purdue, Mercyhurst, Monmouth, and the Notre Dame Alumni team. In addition, a Notre Dame B squad participated as well, comprised mostly of the club’s large freshmen class.

In the Irish first game against Monmouth on Saturday morning, the club came out strong to take a quick 4-0 nothing lead in the first quarter with junior Patrick Connors scoring two goals, and senior Colin Dunn and freshman Matt Fordonski scoring one each. The Irish continued to light up the goal in the second quarter as well, thanks to two goals by junior Avery Ambrose, one by senior Josh Raycroft, and one by sophomore Luke DePasquale. Senior Jon Kelly posted a shutout in goal in the first half. The second half was much of the same and the Irish were able to rotate many players in the pool, finishing out strong with a 15-3 victory. Second half goals by juniors Devin Fee and Joel Theilen as well as sophomores Paul Colianni and Alex Wheeler.

In their second game, the Irish faced a much tougher opponent in Mercyhurst, a division II varsity team with several All-American players. However, the Irish still came out fired up and managed to hit the back of the net 5 times in the first half with Fordonski and Dunn each scoring twice and senior Zhan-Wei Khaw once to forge a 5-5 at the half. Goalie Short had an excellent game, blocking many great shots by Mercyhurst including a 5 meter penalty shot. Unfortunately, however, the Irish were unable to keep up the pace in the second half and began to seriously tire in the third quarter. Mercyhurst pulled quickly pulled ahead by five goals and the Irish were only able to respond with one by Connors. The game slowed in the fourth quarter as Mercyhurst scored two more unanswered goals for a 12-6 victory.

The last game of the day for the Irish A team was against the ND Alumni team. The two teams kept the score neck and neck for the entire game, with the Alumni ahead 6-5 at the quarter. The Irish, however, managed to take the lead in the third quarter and although the Alumni continued to keep things close, the Irish held on for an 11-10 victory. The goals on the (young) Irish side were fairly evenly distributed with Dunn scoring three, Kelly two, Fordonski two, and Ambrose, Theilen, Connors, and Khaw all scoring one.

The final game of the weekend against Purdue also turned out to be very close. Connors lit up the goal in the first quarter, scoring three right off the bat with Dunn adding one to make it 4-1 the end of the quarter. Purdue bounced back in the third quarter to tie it up, and the two teams battled it out in the fourth with Connors, Dunn, and Fordonski scoring one goal each, and Purdue answering with an additional three goals to knot the score at 7-7. The game ended in a shootout as goalie Jon Kelly performed spectacularly for the Irish, blocking three Purdue shots. Damian Sharratt, Sebastian Andres-Testero, and Fordonski all scored in the shootout for the Irish victory, 10-9.