The Iona College men’s water polo team (8-21) concluded its 2017 campaign after defeating MIT 10-9 to claim fifth place at the NEWPC Championships on Nov. 18. While the season may have been a bumpy one with many obstacles, Iona still persevered through 29 games.

The season opened up with a pair of wins and losses at the Navy Open in September. Iona’s 13-1 victory over Washington & Jefferson gave head coach Brian Kelly high hopes for the regular season.

“We were expecting to have a very good season,” Kelly said. “Unfortunately, you can’t really predict injuries and you have to overcome them.”

Injuries became a huge obstacle for the team throughout the season. As Iona polished its chemistry more and more, injuries still hindered the Gaels’ goal at reaching the peak of their potential.

“It was a long season,” Kelly said. “We never really got to where we wanted to be.”

Iona played in a handful of overtime and high-intensity games that Kelly believed his team should’ve won.

“We should’ve won at least three of them, unfortunately,” Kelly said. “We let a couple teams off the hook and it’s something that we can’t let happen.”

The Gaels struggled against ranked teams as they supported a 1-9 record when playing against some of the top teams in the nation.

“If we’re going to be the program we want to be, we have to win some of those games,” Kelly said. “We thought this was going to be the year where we started to turn the corner and win some of those games and get ourselves back into the national rankings. Now we’re just going to have to get it done next year.”

A lot of the matches played, especially the Judge Cup against Fordham on Oct. 26, brought out the best in some players through the intense and high-pressure moments.

“The Judge Cup comes to mind because that was a win against a ranked team, and we played very well,” Kelly said. “I thought the game versus Whittier [showed the potential]. They’re very solid, I thought we played really well in that game.”

This wasn’t the season Iona was hoping for, but the Gaels have identified their consistent problems and hope to correct them going into next season.

“We kept getting beat by the same thing over and over, and it was the way we controlled the ball,” Kelly said. “We have to make it to a point where it’s not acceptable to turn the ball over, it has to be established at practice, and that’s something we’re going to do immediately.”