By Matias Brule
The Benicia High school Boys water polo team has had one of their best seasons ever this year. The 2025 season has seen them end up third place in a tournament. And they have placed high on 4 other tournaments, but the question is why are they doing better this year than years previous? There are many reasons why they are doing better this season but there are 2 main reasons.
One of the major reasons for success this year is our D1 player Elijah Baladin. He scored over 105 points this season and is team captain. He helped set up plays and led in the field.
When I asked Mr.Keoppen who was the best player “Lead players were Elijah Balandin and Mason Godden. Both were threats on offense and defense. I would also credit Logan Baeta, Sage Nelson, and Carter Hoffman for being strong supportive role players making it challenging for opponents to focus on only a few players,” which really proves that Eljiah was one of the reasons we did so good this season.
The biggest reason why there’s a difference between this season and the previous is a change in coaches. When I asked players on the team the sentiment seemed to show that the new coach contributed the most “Mr.Koeppen helped us so much this season. Not to hate on Mr.Fry (previous coach) but Mr.Koeppen is the GOAT (greatest of all time), he taught us so many new things compared to last year.” This is a quote from varsity team player Zach St.John. And personally as a player on the team for 2 years I agree with that.
And to finish off, I’ll talk about our best game this season. “I think the strongest played game for boys was the final game against Concord.,” said Mr.Koeppen, our team played one of our best games. Concord and Benicia are both tied for 25th place in the final league ranking. And the team won 11-9.
beniciapaw.com 