The boys from Bainbridge went 2-for-2 at the Washington State Boys Water Polo Championship at Curtis High School last week and claimed the fifth-place spot in the tournament, ending a stellar season which saw the varsity team enter the postseason with a flawless 8-0 conference record and the top spot in their league.

“We’re really excited,” Spartan Head Coach Kristin Gellert said. “They didn’t outperform their potential but they reached every last bit of potential that they could have for this season.”

The tournament began Thursday, Nov. 10, with the Bainbridge High team facing off against Bellevue, a debut which did not go as the island squad hoped — but did go as they expected, Bellevue being a notorious powerhouse in the state. BHS lost 17-3, but rebounded quickly to beat Puyallup 7-5 the very next day.

“After two years of trying to make last-quarter comebacks and losing by one point we went out to a three-point lead and won,” Gellert said.

The win on Friday slated Bainbridge for a matchup against Mercer Island Saturday, where a win would have put them in the running for the third-place spot.

As they were then bested 11-7 by those other Islanders, though, the best the Spartans could do was fifth — which they did with a 6-4 win later that day against their resilient rivals from Gig Harbor.

It was, Gellert said, her favorite match of the entire weekend.

“We knew that we could do it,” she said. “It was just a matter of playing the way that we needed to play. We’d beaten Gig Harbor already twice this season, but they beat us just a week beforehand so we knew we could do it because we’d done it before. It was just a matter of who wanted it most, essentially.”

The Spartans definitely did.

Way back at the beginning of the season, the coach recalled, she’d crunched the numbers with the boys and they had agreed that if everything went well this year, and the usual front runners performed as expected and they played to their potential, fifth place was a reasonable best-case scenario.

“At the beginning of the season I’d kind of set that far out goal that fifth place was within our grasp, but we’d have to work really hard for it,” Gellert said.

“It was a realistic goal, but it was definitely the peak of where I thought we could be at the end of the season, and for them to reach that goal that I had set for them was just phenomenal.”

Not only did the BHS team achieve that dream, she added, they did it with plenty of class left to spare at the finale.

“It was just so fun-spirited,” Gellert said of the final match. “In the first sprint of the game the two sprinters stopped when they got to the ball and did rock, paper, scissors [for possession].

“It was just a really fun game and it was a clean game — just good water polo,” she added. “Even if we didn’t [win], it would still be a great way to end the season.”

Gellert praised the progress made by the Spartans’ main rivals, who have not, she said, even been active in the sport that long.

“They’ve only been a team for four years,” she said of Gig Harbor. “The guys who are seniors this year started on the team as freshmen when it first started, so it was a cool way for them to end that, too.”

Days earlier, after the disappointing debut against Bellevue, the coach said the challenge became not allowing that loss to color the rest of the tournament so they could get to that classy ending.

“We played as hard as we could play,” she said. “If you play your best and you try your hardest for the whole game and you don’t win, then another team is better than you. But if you play a game and look back and think of how you could have done things differently, then you beat yourself. And Bellevue beat us because they’re a really, really good team and they’re strong and fast and smart, so we weren’t disappointed.

“We were really proud of the way the guys played.”

Bainbridge has begun building a reputation around the state, the coach explained, with several of her colleagues expressing a wary respect for the Spartans and competitive eagerness to face them again soon.

“A lot of the other coaches have come up to me and said that they’re watching out for Bainbridge,” she said. “The Curtis coach talked to me after the game, after they had won state, and he had said that our team reminds him of his team just a couple of years ago and he’s excited for some close matches against us.”

The team’s strength, Gellert said, comes from a solid club program, general enthusiasm and its relatively young makeup overall.

“It’s a pretty senior-heavy state and we have a really young team,” Gellert said. “I think we could be on a medal stand next year. I don’t want to get ahead of myself but looking at what we have coming up from our club and the returning players and how much passion there is and desire for that, to reach those goals, I think they can exceed expectations.”