NEW LENOX – Lincoln-Way Central’s boys water polo team is optimistic that it can advance to a third-straight sectional final and contend for its second trip to state in three years, while Lincoln-Way West has taken awhile to put it together this season.
There wasn’t much that separated the rivals when they met on Tuesday for a SouthWest Suburban Conference match at the westside campus.
The Warriors rallied to force a tie with just over four minutes remaining before the Knights collected five of the final six goals to capture a 14-10 victory.
A sign of how much the shift in the Lincoln-Way schools has affected the sport, four players who had prominent roles on the area’s last two state teams – 2015 Central and 2016 East – competed, but only one still was on the same team as when he went to state.
That was Central’s Matt Klock, who collected half of his game-high six goals in the final period to help the Knights hold off the Warriors’ challenge.
“I haven’t played with a lot of these guys for four years, so it’s kind of cool to play with them again,” Klock said. “There were kids from two schools coming together, but there’s always been just one team since water polo is just so close. It was cool to play against Cody (Torres) and I know that West gone through some tough times, but they played really hard today.
“The East kids have kind of been our saving grace since they gave us a lot of people and a lot of new ideas. I really like how we have so many good players on this team and we have two full lines of kids who can play really well and not many teams have that.”
A big key for the Knights has been the addition of six players from East, including two who played key roles last season. They are Mason Maze, who scored two goals, and goalie Jacob Culver, who made several big saves.
“I definitely think that we’ve melded together really well,” Maze said. “We played on our club team together (Lincoln-Way Area Water Polo), so it’s just like being with old friends again and getting back together with the team and all of our guys are close already. I think that we could have won all of the games that we lost, but we just made some small mistakes.”
The Knights took an 8-6 lead into the final period and went up by three scores just 14 seconds into that on a goal by Klock. But West battled back with goals from Tyler Hubbs, Josh Carlson (five goals) and Cody Torres (four goals) to tie things at 9-9 with 4:05 remaining.
But Ryan Burke put Central back up for good with 3:39 left and then Maze and Klock assisted each other on goals to make it 12-9 with 2:13 left. After Carlson connected again for the hosts, Klock and Josh Fox closed out the scoring.
“In our conference and sectional, I think it could go to anyone and it will be intense,” first-year Knights coach Jacob Bernard said. “By the time we get to sectionals, I feel like we’ll have everything down pat. We know how to play, we just have to make sure that we do it from the beginning all the way to the end of the game. Our guys have kept pushing each other. We didn’t have East-Central diversity, they welcomed each other and blended right away.”
Things were tight in the first half with Klock scoring three goals and Dylan Sterling getting two of his three goals to give Central a 6-5 lead. After Torres tied things early in the third, Klock and Sterling connected again to make it 8-6 with seven minutes left.
“This was probably one of the best performances that we’ve had this season,” West coach Steve Anderson said. “We were in it the entire time and that game could have gone either way. We lost a few starters at the beginning of the year, so this is a relatively new group and I only have three guys with real varsity experience. But I have a lot of guys who’ve jumped into that role and are doing a fantastic job. We’re not very deep, but we’re committed.”
The Warriors have benefited from the addition of former Knight Torres, who was a key player on Central’s state team.
“That definitely was the best that we’ve played together this year,” Torres said. “We were in a championship game at the Schaumburg tournament and didn’t even play as good as we did today. We played a lot better in this game than a lot of people expected. What brought us back into the game was not giving up when we were down by three. But Central is good and has a deep bench and that’s one of the reasons that they outswam us a little bit.”