LOCKPORT – Friday’s regular season finale provided a going away party for nine seniors on Lockport’s boys water polo team.

The Porters won their 20th game and avenged an earlier defeat to Homewood-Flossmoor in a 14-8 SouthWest Suburban Conference home victory.

Six different players scored goals for the Porters (20-7, 9-4). Eric Johnson led the way with four, Steven Howell and Zach Elias scored three each, Tommy Boland had two while Joe Tomczuk and Eric Krawczyk had one apiece.

All of the goal scorers except for Krawczyk are seniors. The squad’s other seniors are Kristopher Ackerman, Matt Cavanaugh, Angelo DeMarco and goalie Pat Melaniphy.

Coach Joe Lewandowski’s Porters are ranked 11th in the state by illpolo.com. However, they’re in one of the state’s toughest sectionals, at Neuqua Valley, which includes No. 2 Naperville Central, No. 5 Neuqua and No. 10 Naperville North.

Many of this year’s seniors have witnessed some of their program’s biggest moments, beginning with the 2012 team that placed fourth at state. The Porters are 97-26 over the past four years, winning at nearly an 80 percent rate, and each finished ranked among the top 15 teams in Illinois.

Lockport’s transformation into a top program each year means a lot to Cavanaugh, whose brothers Michael, Patrick and Brian all played there, as did his sister, Megan, in the girls program. He has pretty much watched things grow from the ground up.

“Starting out freshman year, none of us had played polo but we all kind of knew each other since we went to grade school,” Cavanaugh said. “We’ve come closer as friends and as a team, starting with swimming and then into polo. We just understand each other and gel.

“I used to get dragged to every game, so I know that the program has come a long way. Lew’s really changed the program and has stepped up everything. I remember in my freshman year I never thought I’d get better but over time, they’ve really honed our skills.”

While none of these players were on that state team, just seeing what they accomplished obviously raised the bar for everyone.

“That got us really pumped for the game and the whole team has been working hard ever since,” Tomczuk said. “We’re here so much of the time and Lew works us hard and it’s paid off. I’m proud of how close we’ve gotten. We’re very close, probably best friends. So just being able to play with these guys has been extremely fun and awesome.”

With many of the senior group having gone to school together at Homer Junior High, it’s not surprising that they’ve developed into such a close group.

“We have a really good team this year,” DeMarco said. “We keep each other pumped up since we know that we have to maintain this high spot. The program has grown the years, and now we’re in a position where we can only go up. When we were sophomores, we stepped it up, and won our first JV conference (title) and we’ve just kept getting better since.”

The seniors give plenty of credit for the program’s success to Lewandowski, who fielded his first varsity team in 2004 and struggled through some tough times.

“Our success definitely starts with the coaches, who motivate us to get in the pool every day to work as hard as we can,” Elias said. “I think that our coaching is what’s made us successful year after year. Being in a sectional that we’re not usually in, we take that as a challenge. I’m most proud of how we all work together and communicates in the pool.”

The program has posted 17 or more wins in eight of the past nine seasons. They went 27-5 last season, 28-5 in 2013 and 22-9 the year they won a trophy.

“We really take pride in trying to be better than the team before,” Melaniphy said. “Last year we had one of our best teams ever, and this year we think that we’re just as good. Lew tells us all the time that when the program started, it was a little shaky. But each year he gets players who keep getting better and better. We take pride in being part of a top-20 team year after year and it’s fun to keep it going.”