Santa Ynez Valley High School’s Annie Ackert has veteran-level water polo experience despite her young years—and despite only picking up the sport as a freshman.
As a sophomore, the now-junior utility player put in two goals in the 2017 CIF Southern Section Division 7 championship game, helping lead the Pirates to their first-ever title. The current season hasn’t gone quite as smoothly—Santa Ynez has a 5-10 record as of press time—but Ackert pushed her team to 3-0 in league play on Jan. 17 by scoring six goals in a 19-1 win over Santa Maria.
“Now that there’s no real big star on the team, we’ve had to develop our newer and younger players to all be strong players,” Ackert told the Sun by phone. “We work more as a team now because of that.”
While it’s taken some time to regroup with younger teammates and a new head coach, Tim Miller, Ackert said things are looking better than ever now for the Pirates.
“It’s almost better than last year,” she said, adding that reaching the CIF Southern Section finals continues to be the goal for the team.
The pool was a foreign place for Ackert until her freshman year in high school. She didn’t participate in youth water polo or even competitive swimming growing up. Ackert was a softball player. When she gave water polo a try, her interests quickly shifted.
“I really liked how much teamwork there was in water polo, how much everyone had to work together rather than in softball where it’s just one player doing a lot of the stuff,” Ackert said. “It’s a lot of sports combined into one, and I really like that.”
A little more than two years later, Ackert now has her sights set on playing Division 1 college water polo. When asked what she wants to improve on to get to that level, Ackert said, “everything.”
“If you want to get to the top and be the best, you have to,” she said, explaining that “awareness” and “communication” were the two most important elements of the game.
Miller, the Pirates’ coach, praised Ackert’s “tenacity” in the pool, in addition to her having sound fundamentals.
“She plays incredible defense and has a really quick shot,” Miller said. “She’s a very mechanical player.”
This article appears in Jan 25 – Feb 1, 2018.