WALNUT — While his senior season could arguably be remembered as
Hakop Kaplanyan's most successful in a Hoover High cap, the final match
of his high school career will likely go down as his worst.
Not
because the Tornadoes fell to a deeper, more playoff-tested Pasadena
Poly squad, 13-6, in the CIF Southern Section Division V semifinals
Wednesday night at Mount San Antonio College, but because the final
image of an athlete who so dominated swimming pools across the section
for four years was of Kaplanyan sitting on the edge of the pool deck
powerless.
"It just kills me because I want to be there helping
them out and I want to be there doing it, but I'm not able to do
anything," Kaplanyan said. "I know for a fact that if I was in there,
that five-goal first quarter [deficit] was nothing for us. We've brought
games back [from down] seven goals, nine goals, so it was just
disheartening. I was powerless to do anything like that, it was just
awful."
Posted by Vahagn Arakelyan.
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