June 6, 2005
SAN DIEGO - San Diego State water polo experienced its ups and downs throughout the 2005 campaign. Despite being a rebuilding year and playing nearly 71 percent of its games away from the Kroc Community Center, the Aztecs remained competitive and ended the season on a high note.
The year started out promising after two consecutive wins at the UCSD Invitational over CS Bakersfield, 11-4, and UC Davis, 9-5. But as luck would have it, the Aztecs' dropped four straight to top-10 opponents in No. 5 Long Beach State, No. 4 Loyola Marymount, No. 2 Southern California and No. 10 UC Santa Barbara.
The next 14 games found SDSU struggling to get on a roll, winning successive games only once. Besides a 6-5 overtime win over No. 11 Michigan at the Gaucho Invitational and a win at Pacific by the same score, the Aztecs continued its win one, lose one trend to finish at 10-10 through 20 games.
The team's 10th victory came at the expense of 20th-ranked Cal Baptist, 9-1, in Hawaii. During the trip, the No. 12 Aztecs tallied a pair of wins over Canada's two national teams. With spring break nearing an end and three wins under its belt, SDSU closed out its trip with a 9-5 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation loss to fourth-ranked Hawaii.
The remaining nine games of the regular season resembled much of what occurred during the first half as the Aztecs finished the home stretch of the season with a 4-5 mark. Two of those wins saw SDSU claim a 9-4 win over UC San Diego, the Aztecs' fourth straight Harper Cup win, and an 11-5 victory over No. 17 Arizona State on Senior Day.
With a 3-9 conference record, SDSU went into the MPSF Championships in Berkeley, as the tournament's 10th seed. In game one, the Aztecs avenged two earlier losses to UCSB by defeating the seventh-seeded Gauchos, 7-4. The win gave SDSU its first three-game winning streak of the season. After consecutive losses to USC and California, the Aztecs went into the seventh-place game against CS Northridge and handled the ninth-seeded Matadors, 8-3.
At season's end, the MPSF handed out its annual awards by naming Rachel Serna to the all-MPSF honorable mention squad. The April 25 Mikasa player of the week was fourth in the conference in scoring and led the Aztecs with 65 goals, the eighth-highest single season total in program history.
Delgado, the Harper Cup MVP, completed her SDSU career as the school's all-time assists leader with 126. Her 136 career steals ranks her sixth in school history.
Joining Delgado in the record book is Elana Cervantes, who set a new SDSU record for assists in a season as she totaled 56, eclipsing the old mark of 48 set last year by Delgado.
With another season in the books, and 84 percent of the team's scoring expected to return, big things are in store for SDSU in 2006.