Boys water polo: Neuqua Valley rebounds against St. Charles North
It's natural that after a tough loss a team wants to get back into the groove as soon as possible. That was the case with the Neuqua Valley boys water polo team.
The No. 1 team in the state, Naperville Central, beat the Wildcats by double digits on Tuesday, but 48 hours later Neuqua came back with a solid game on both offense and defense to beat visiting St. Charles North 16-9 on Thursday night.
"We wanted to come back today and get confidence and that's what we did," said Neuqua's Joey Dalesandro, who led the Wildcats (8-5) with 6 goals.
At the beginning it looked like Neuqua could do no wrong and the North Stars (3-9) couldn't get anything going. The Wildcats led 7-1 after two quarters with Dalesandro scoring 4 of those goals.
J.P. Leshock, who scored 4 goals, pushed Neuqua to 8-1 just 49 seconds into the third quarter. Then St. Charles North finally generated some momentum. In the span of 1:27, Nathan Bawolek scored three times with assists going to Sam Lilly on the first and Jack Wiliams on the second. Bawolek finished with 4 goals.
North Stars coach Chris Cloy said his team turned up its aggressiveness in the final two quarters, something that was lacking at the start of the match.
"We didn't make any adjustments. We just came out much more aggressive. We had a fire in our belly," he said.
Kyle Geekie scored with 3:01 remaining in the third and Neuqua led 9-4 after it.
Dalesandro said St. Charles North started taking advantage of open space in front of the net.
"Once we started playing zone defense that tightened up," he said.
The North Stars pulled to within 4 twice in the final quarter, including Stephen Hutchinson scoring his first of 3 goals for the quarter with 5:22 remaining that made it 10-6 Neuqua.
The Wildcats scored the next 3 goals to make it 13-6 before the squads exchanged goals to close the contest.
Jack Williams added 2 goals to the North Stars' scoresheet.
Neuqua coach Adam Hoffer said it was crucial for the Wildcats to keep their cool when the North Stars were battling back during the final two quarters.
"We did a pretty good job of that and made sure we shut things down," he said.
Troy Salafatinos scored three times for the Wildcats and Adam McGovern tallied twice. Five players contributing to the Neuqua scoring was indicative of all aspects of the Wildcats' offense being in sync.
"During spring break we worked on being more fluid, getting more counterattacks today and just attacking more on offense. We've been working on anticipation and awareness that the second the (opponent's) shot is taken to get downfield and try and score," Hoffer said.