“Laurel has been an integral part of our success this season,” junior Shami Entenman added. “She’s had some outstanding games. She’s done a great job, and definitely the Brown game was a highlight. She had some key saves at key moments.”

Fortunately for the Crimson, McCarthy appears to have saved her best performances for the end of the season.

“She’s getting better as the year has gone on,” Fish said. “And that’s all that we can ask of any of our people.”

McCarthy’s quality play could also have huge postseason implications for the team, which intends—like all other teams—to make a strong postseason run.

“One of our goals as a team is to go to Easterns, and go very deep into the tournament, and see how far we can go,” Ferrar said.

Harvard remains hopeful of receiving an at-large bid to the Eastern Conference Championships, where an overall victory would lead to the NCAA tournament.

“Individually,” McCarthy said, “and this would go for everyone on my team, we want to walk away from every game, win or lose, knowing that we played our best and that we trained our hardest for that particular game.”

With every save she makes, McCarthy continues to prove that one doesn’t have to possess a Golden State pedigree to succeed in the pool.

"It’s important to me to let people know that there is water polo outside of Cali,” McCarthy said.