Girls water polo: Naperville Central beats Neuqua Valley
Some teams, regardless of sport, know how to to do it. Others are not very good at it. Consider the Naperville Central girls water polo team in that first group.
After host Neuqua Valley dominated the first quarter Tuesday night, the Redhawks made necessary adjustments and scored seven unanswered goals to win 7-2.
"We have a real intelligent group of players. There have been a few times this season that we have had to adjust on the fly," said Naperville Central coach Jeff Plackett. "We made one offensive adjustment and one defensive adjustment at the end of the first quarter."
And it was all Neuqua Valley (6-4) during the first seven minutes as Catherine Carroll scored 27 seconds into the game and with 1:22 remaining after grabbing a rebound of an original shot that hit the net's crossbar.
Naperville Central (11-1) hit the back of the net for the first time of the evening when Kaela Codo struck with 5:40 left until halftime. She scored her second of three goals in the contest just over three minutes later that tied the game at 2.
The Redhawks took the lead with less than a minute left when Jennifer Oliver was left undefended to the left of the Neuqua net and scored with 55 seconds and 25 seconds remaining, respectively.
"I think what I was impressed with Jennifer's goals was that she was very patient," Plackett said. "She paused before finishing those shots."
It had been exactly two weeks since Naperville Central had played with spring break having taken place last week. Oliver said the team immediately got down to business.
"We had a very focused practice our first day back. We had a talk with our coach and we set goals for the rest of the season," she said.
The Redhawks got to work immediately in the third quarter when Emily Rodgers hit net 10 seconds in. Naperville Central struck two more times during the period. Emily Westlove took a pass from Codo to make it 6-2 with 2:55 left and the final Redhawks goal of the night came 47 seconds later as Codo tallied her third.
"After a week off we were rusty in the first quarter and we just tried to get back into the rhythm of our game," Codo said. "We started communicating and we started connecting passes to each other."
Winning goalie Faith Vandercar finished with 8 saves, including a crucial one right at the end of the third quarter that Plackett said helped the team keep its momentum.
Neuqua goalie Issi French made 9 saves. Wildcats coach Lucy Tiffin said her team continues to make progress but just didn't have an answer for when the Redhawks made their adjustments.
"I'm proud of our continuity on plays and we communicated with each other," she said. "We knew exactly what we wanted to do on offense and we had a plan on defense."
Both the Redhawks and Wildcats face St. Charles North for their next contests. Neuqua travels to St. Charles on Thursday, with Naperville Central paying a visit Tuesday.