The Forest Hills water polo team, made up of all three Forest Hills High Schools, traveled to East Kentwood just before spring break to face off in their first quad of the season. Unfourtanly for the team, early rust contributed to a slow start. In the end, Forest Hills narrowly dropped both of its games.

The first game saw FH face-off with the hosting Falcons team of East Kentwood. It seemed that the firepower that the Falcons brought was just too much, as they went on to defeat Forest Hills by a score of 7-3. The squad’s last game of the day was versus a team that the girls will play several more times this year, Grand Haven. This contest remained much closer, but Grand Haven pulled away in the end, winning by a score of 11-8.

With those two losses, the team now starts the year 0-2 on the season. However, they can quickly get back up to a .500 win percentage or higher this week. This upcoming week will be a busy one, as FH will play three different matches in the next five days. First, Grand Ledge will come to town on Tuesday. Once April 15th rolls around, they will be matched up with their bitter rival in East Grand Rapids. After those two games, the team will then travel to their first district seeding games of the year. In the seeding games, the girls are scheduled to play against three others teams that include Grandville, Zeeland, and Jenison.

The district seeding games have been hurdles for Forest Hills in the past, so the team is both nervous and optimistic for the challenge this year. Before entering the grueling stretch of the regular season, junior Avery Verlinde was positive about getting the chance to square off toe-to-toe with some of the squad’s district foes.

“District seeding games are taken very seriously, and they go towards your ranking and how well the team does overall while playing the people in your conference,” said Avery.

With the spread of Covid-19 though, the significance of the tournament games is likely to change.

“They are taken much more seriously than tournament games because they count for something,” Avery said. “However, this year I’m pretty sure with Covid some of the tournament games will also count towards the district seeding games.”