Five years, five crowning moments.
In April, Pomona-Pitzer captured its fifth consecutive USA Water Polo Division III championship, defeating rival Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS), 15-10, to send another senior class off with a handful of hardware.
The Sagehens and Stags have met in the Division III championship game four years running, their eternal Sixth Street rivalry one of the best in the country.
“We’ve won the whole time we’ve been here,” says Mia Amberger ’26, who led the Sagehens in points this season, “and I feel because of that, it’s difficult to not fall into the trap of playing not to lose rather than playing to win.”
“But we did a phenomenal job this year in the championship game of playing to win.”
On the road to their fifth straight Division III title, the Sagehens defeated Division I UC Santa Barbara for the first time in program history. They also clipped Division I Cal Baptist.
More impressive than the wins themselves, Sagehens Coach Alex Rodriguez says, is when they happened. Both victories followed adversity—the first, after a rare nonconference loss to CMS, and the second, after losing star center Paityn Richardson ’27 to injury.
Beyond the championships, Ayva Magna ’26 says her class’s legacy is defined, in part, by standing toe-to-toe with and knocking off first-class foes.
“Every year we’ve been able to beat new Division I teams—UCSB, Cal Baptist, Indiana, Brown,” she says. “We’ve always tried to show our younger girls that we have more goals than winning the championship game.”
Rodriguez schedules Division I opponents because “I don’t believe there’s a Division III in the real world,” he says. “It’s just about excellence, and I want our girls to see who’s doing it better and try to mimic and learn from them.”
Brienz Lang ’26, who played through injury this season and was named Tournament MVP after the championship win, couldn’t have asked for a better conclusion to her Sagehen career.
“I was so proud of everyone,” she says. “It was a great way to end the season.”