HONOLULU — Thirteen years of tests and toil have led up to this.
Maureen Cole’s final, and perhaps finest Hawaii water polo team of her largely successful tenure enters the 2024 NCAA Tournament with a confidence that it is a true contender.
Before second-seeded UH can fully entertain thoughts of the program’s first national championship, it must reach the program’s first national final. And before it can do that, it must get past Princeton in Friday’s 1 p.m. Hawaii time quarterfinal at Cal’s Spieker Aquatics Complex in Berkeley, Calif.
Big West champion UH (22-3), a winner of 10 straight, got a rousing sendoff after its final practice of the year at the Duke Kahanamoku Aquatics Complex on Tuesday.
Cole, the Punahou alumna and Big West Coach of the Year who is retiring after this season after nearly two full decades with the program, had a realization as she drove down the mountainside to the Manoa campus.
“I had a full-on moment, this is the last practice at this place that I’ve spent the last 18 years, every morning, noon and night,” she said. “So, it’s been really special. I’m just thankful for the journey. It’s been a ton of highs and lows but just thankful with all the relationships I’ve built with these girls along the way.”
This team of international talent is the culmination for a veteran group that in two cases began their college careers six years ago. Alba Bonamusa Boix (Spain) and Bernadette Doyle (New Zealand) played their true freshmen seasons in 2019, left their home countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and found their way back.
Sophomore Bia Mantellato Dias of Brazil was again named Big West Player of the Year for providing a presence in the middle, the centrifugal force around which her teammates generate open shots.
It is a dynamic group of swimmers that can break or apply full-pool pressure as needed.
It is supported by a freshman goalkeeper, Daisy Logtens, who earned first-team all-conference honors. Logtens, of the Netherlands, “kept us in games, to be honest,” Cole said, when the defense broke down.
UH went 6-3 against other teams in the nine-team NCAA field, including signature victories over Stanford and USC (twice). It beat Princeton 10-6 early in the season, Jan. 26 in Honolulu and also owns wins over both teams it could see in the semifinals, host Cal and Fresno State.
Senior Lot Stertefeld, another Dutch talent, said she and her teammates carry a different sort of belief than the last time the program made the NCAAs in 2021, her freshman season. UH was never seeded higher than fourth until this year.
“It’s crazy to think. We’ve worked so hard for the last four years – some of us six, five years,” Stertefeld said. “We’ve never been this close to actually competing and able to reach the final. Maybe a little bit of pressure, but super excited.”
UH believes it belongs in the top four – maybe even top two.
Why this group?
Cole said the group of veterans has passed along knowledge to its young stars in ways she has not seen.
“Having girls around that long can either work for you or against you,” she said. “I think this group of older girls has meshed well and embraced the youth.”
Stertefeld said the team leaders are driven to send Cole out with her biggest title of all before she settles down to spend more time with her children.
“That would be awesome,” Stertefeld said. “She worked so hard … at the Duke. To send her off hopefully as a champion would be our biggest wish, for the team, the island and our program.”
Brian McInnis covers the state's sports scene for Spectrum News Hawaii. He can be reached at brian.mcinnis@charter.com.