Boys water polo: Top-ranked Naperville Central defeats Metea Valley
The high school water polo regular season is entering the homestretch for Illinois teams, and the Naperville Central boys squad is no exception.
On senior night at the last home game of the regular season, Naperville Central scored 10 goals during the first two quarters en route to a 14-1 victory over Metea Valley on Tuesday.
The state's No. 1 team improved to 17-0 and 4-0 in the DuPage Valley Conference. The Redhawks are league champs in the first season that water polo was offered by the DVC as a conference sport. Metea fell to 8-10-1 and 1-3.
Phillip Emden paced the Naperville Central offense with 3 goals and Kyle Jackson put through 2. Nine other Redhawks scored and a balanced offense is something that Naperville Central coach Bill Salentine is stressing.
"We've worked hard to not have just one or two go-to scorers. We want a balanced offense. If a team stops our No. 1 and No. 2 players, then the Nos. 3, 4 and 5 players can come through," he said.
Emden opened the scoring 25 seconds into the game. He finished the Redhawks' scoring in that quarter and between his two goals, Scott Piper, Jackson, Kyle Mallen and Brian Calabrese also tallied.
Naperville Central didn't let up in the second with Bender Russo, Matt Reagan, Michael Stern and Lucas Nervig increasing their team's lead to 10-0 after 14 minutes.
"It's senior night and that's usually the last home game. We treated it like a normal game. We didn't come out differently. We wanted to do a good job of passing as a team and scoring as a team," said Emden, one of seven seniors honored before the match.
Emden got his hat trick in the third, Jackson got his second goal with Nick Walker and Eric Stablein contributing to the scoring that quarter.
With just seconds left in the third quarter, Metea's Ashton Howser's shot hit the net's crossbar for the Mustangs' best scoring chance up to that point. Metea's moment carried into the final quarter. Winning goalie Kent Emden had to make a tough save on Keegan Reilly, whose shot only came from a yard or two away. The Mustangs finally hit the back of the net with three minutes left in the game on Cameron Gidlow's 15-yard shot.
Despite the outcome Tuesday, Metea is enjoying a season of improvement and a much fatter win total than last season. Coach Andrew Peterman is pleased with the progress his team is making. He stressed though that when facing a team like Naperville Central, setting the tone early is important and it was difficult to come back after the Redhawks built such a big lead early.
"If we had scored a goal earlier, I think it would have made a big difference. I think we would have stepped up, produced and kept the score closer," Peterman said.
Metea returns to action Saturday at the Valley Varsity Tournament at Neuqua Valley. Naperville Central, meanwhile, travels to Barrington on Thursday and then heads to the Stevenson Tournament on Friday and Saturday.
"We always try to get better every game. The practices are tightly run and we work on offense and defense," Jackson said. "The tournaments coming up at Stevenson and Mundelein are good tests because we'll see teams like Lyons, Stevenson and other teams like we'll see at the end of the year (postseason)."