St. Charles North defeats Waubonsie Valley

Senior goalie Claire Rich and her St. Charles North teammates expected Wednesday's girls water polo match at Waubonsie Valley to be a battle.

"Close games are my favorite games to play because you see the best out of the other girls. I see the best out of me personally," Rich said.

Rich and both teams rose to the occasion, especially defensively, before the North Stars scored twice in the final 2:34 to pull out a 4-2 victory in Aurora.

Senior Katie Steele scored twice for the North Stars (2-1) with the game winner from senior Hannah Turner off a restart. Senior Sarah Gibson had 2 assists, including sophomore Olivia Traxler's insurance goal with 7.34 seconds left.

Senior Maria Campbell scored the first goal for Waubonsie Valley (1-5) and assisted senior Juliette Ansberry's for a 2-1 lead with 2:24 left in the third quarter.

"(Waubonsie) did a great job. They played really good defense. Both sides did," St. Charles North coach Nick Engel said. "We had some things we wanted to try and take away. We were slow getting started, and they got a lot of shots off, but then we kind of figured it out."

In 2016 the Warriors won their regular-season meeting 5-4 in St. Charles. Then the North Stars prevailed 5-4 in the Metea Valley sectional quarterfinals before then losing to eventual state runner-up Naperville Central 7-4.

"Waubonsie's a great team. The last few days we've been coaching up. We watched tape. We came in ready, knowing it was going to be tough," Rich said. "That's really our kind of ideal game (4-2). We don't give up a lot of goals. And this is really big for us because this is a sectional (seeding) game."

After Steele put the North Stars ahead 3-2, the Warriors called a timeout with 45 seconds left, but Traxler stole the ball near mid-pool with 35 seconds. The North Stars worked the 30-second shot clock before Traxler completed the scoring combination with Steele and Gibson.

"I love playing (them) because both of our teams are very similar," Waubonsie coach Kelsey Sopron said. "We're both really good on defense, but it's hard for us to execute on offense because we both have really young teams."

Great defense also played a factor.

Rich had 10 saves, Waubonsie Valley senior and returning second-team all-sectional goalie Nicole Conway had 9 and both teams hit the post or crossbar five times. That included the North Stars' 5-meter penalty shot at 1-1 prior to the third quarter after several minutes of confusion among the officials.

As great defensive holes for their respective teams, Steele had 5 steals and Campbell 4. Waubonsie sophomore Claire Matta and Gibson each had 2. St. Charles North senior Beth Ann Ellingson also proved important to the interior defense.

"It helps me a lot because I know that I have lots of girls in the pool that I know that I can count on," Rich said. "Engel stresses strong defense. I know they're going to be coming back to help me."

St. Charles North withstood seven shots before taking a 1-0 lead on its first shot by junior Hannah Springer off an Ellingson pass. Only 13 seconds later, an unguarded Anderson crept in from top of the point and tied the game.

Ansberry scored in transition following junior Alex Triko's steal. Steele tied the match 2-2 with 9.83 seconds left in the third quarter off a restart lob by Gibson.

"I think it's always tight, especially sectional (seeding) games. We both want to win," Steele said. "We both played an amazing game and we just happened to come out on top on that one. It's nice to see that we won it and the fact that our teamwork and our capability to work together and be a cohesive team led to that victory."

Waubonsie was minus one starter but received great leadership from its seniors. Conway, who will compete in rowing at Indiana University, was regarded by Sopron as the "eyes on the field" and the "glue to our team."

"We did lose a lot of seniors, a lot of strong players, so we did know we had to work harder than we did last year. We played our hardest," said Campbell, who had a team-high 33 steals in 2016. "A positive is we're definitely getting stronger as a team. Our connection is getting better so we're communicating a lot more and being able to execute better in the pool."