Bronx, N.Y. – (September 13, 2024) – It's week two of the Fordham water polo season and the Rams have another challenging weekend ahead with a pair of nationally ranked opponents on the schedule.
Fordham enters the weekend at #14 in the CWPA/NCAA poll, while moving up three spots in ACWPC poll to #12. The Rams open the weekend at the Princeton Invitational, where they will play #11/14 UC San Diego on Saturday at 11:00 AM. On Sunday, Fordham has its home opener at the Col. Francis B. Messmore Aquatic Center against #15/16 Harvard at noon.
The Rams (3-0) look to keep things rolling after netting 71 goals in their opening three contests, leading to the team's first 3-0 start since 2001. Fordham posted two ranked opponent wins over #20 Brown and #17 Cal Baptist and capped the weekend with a win over MIT.
UC San Diego started their season at 3-1 at the Triton Invitational with the lone loss coming to #1 UCLA. Christian Hammonds was the team's top scorer with 12 points on three goals and nine assists, while Bennett Axline totaled eight goals on opening weekend. In net, Logan Estes saw the most action, making 34 saves to go with seven steals in just over 100 minutes of work.
Harvard was 2-1 at the Bruno Classic last weekend with the lone loss being a one-goal game against #6 Pacific, while defeating Wagner and #17 Cal Baptist. The Crimson did play a fourth game on the weekend, an exhibition against Fordham, where the Rams came out on top, 18-11.
SERIES HISTORY: Fordham and UC San Diego have only met once previously in 2019, where the then-#9 Tritons picked up a 19-5 win at the Gary Troyer Tournament in Claremont, California.
Fordham and Harvard's playing series dates back to the mid-1960s, but this is the Crimson's first visit to the Bronx since 2015. Fordham has had the better results recently, winning two of the last three meetings, including last year's match-up at the Princeton Invitational. The Rams won that match, 14-10, with
Balazs Berenyi netting a game-high five goals with
George Papanikolaou recording a hat trick.
LERCARI NAMED DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK (9/9): The Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference (MAWPC) released its weekly awards with Fordham senior
Thomas Lercari earning the league's Defensive Player of the Week honor. It is his eighth career Defensive Player of the Week award.
Lercari played very well in net for the Rams at the Bruno Classic, totaling 24 saves, five assists, seven steals, and three penalty blocks. He opened the Classic against #20 Brown, recording 12 saves, which included a career-high three penalty blocks, in just over three quarters of action, while adding an assist and two steals. He registered seven saves, two assists, and four steals in just over three quarters in a win against #17 Cal Baptist, and then wrapped the weekend with five saves, two assists, and a steal in the first quarter versus MIT.
LAST TIME OUT (9/8): The nationally ranked Fordham water polo team continued their offensive assault at the Bruno Classic on Sunday, posting a 26-10 win over the MIT Engineers to improve to 3-0 on the season for the first time since 2001.
Fordham had a perfect start in the first quarter, scoring 11 times on 11 shots to take an 11-2 lead.
Andras Toth recorded a first quarter hat trick with
Marco Napolitano and
Luca Provenziani each having two goals.
The Rams' offensive attack continued its assault with eight more tallies in the second quarter with
Jacopo Parrella scoring twice to complete a hat trick. Fordham never looked back, as Napolitano and
Csongor Bartuszek also finished the game with three-goal games.
TEAM CAPTAINS: Fordham will have the trio of seniors
Mark Katsev,
Lucas Nieto Jasny, and
Luca Silvestri as team captains for the 2024 season.
CAREER MILESTONES: Last weekend, senior
Jacopo Parrella reached 200 career goals scored, becoming just the third Fordham water polo player in the last 40 years to reach that mark, joining Rick Sweeney (215 – 1984-87) and
Jake Miller-Tolt (351 – 2016-19). Parrella looks to have company shortly in the 200-goal group, as fellow seniors
George Papanikolaou (199) and
Lucas Nieto Jasny (187) are also closing in on that milestone. Additionally, Papanikolaou looks to surpass Miller-Tolt's modern day career assists record of 220, as Papanikolaou stands at 219.
WELCOME ABOARD: The Rams added 11 newcomers, which included graduate students
James Oriskovich and
Marco Napolitano, as well freshman
Andras Toth. Oriskovich spent the last three seasons at UC Santa Barbara, totaling 68 goals in that time with a career-high 35 in 2023, while Napolitano, a long-time club teammate of Parrella and Silvestri in Italy, comes to Rose Hill after playing for the Posillipo Senior Team that competed in Serie A1, one of the highest level leagues in the world. Toth enters his first season at Fordham after winning the 2024 Men's U18 World Championship for the Hungarian National Team.
WHO'S NEXT: Fordham will have four matches next weekend at the Bison Invitational, three of which will be MAWPC league contests. The Rams will play Mt. St. Mary's (10:00 AM) and Bucknell (3:20 PM) on Saturday, September 21
st, while facing Johns Hopkins (10:40 AM) and Salem (2:40 PM) on Sunday, September 22
nd.
