Palatine prevails in ‘friendly’ with Wheeling

Palatine boys water polo coach Joe Grzybek set up a game against Wheeling as a favor to Wildcats coach Rudy Means, who came to the job relatively late and was unable to arrange for much beyond regular-season games already on the schedule.

It’s the kind of thing a friend would do for a friend — and that what Grzybek and Means are. They’re former classmates and teammates from the Class of 2000 at Palatine, and both of them ended up getting something important out of Thursday’s matchup at Palatine.

First of all, both programs got a whole lot of water polo played. The match was tied at 7-7 after regulation, neither team scored through two overtimes, and finally Palatine’s Justin Behrens ended it with a man-up goal with a half-minute left in sudden death.

Defending Mid-Suburban League champ Palatine was happy to come out of it with a victory, especially considering the Pirates weren’t close to full strength, missing standout Kamil Mulawa to injury, another to a spring break commitment (Dylan Weissmann) and two more whose participation was curtailed by injury (John Giuliano and Zach Gray).

Fortunately for Palatine, one of the players not missing was standout goalkeeper Dan Sommerfeld. Both he and Wheeling goalie Shane McDade put on a clinic with both excellent positional play and terrific reaction saves. Sommerfeld finished with 20 saves, and McDade had 24.

“I’d say the goalies were the MVPs of the game,” said Grzybek. “What we learned is that we really have a lot of things we need to work on.”

Means, whose team already has beaten defending MSL East champ Buffalo Grove, was pleased to see his group meet the standard set by Palatine.

“It’s always hard to lose, but people across the state are going to take a look at this score and realize that we’re a team to contend with,” he said.

One key for Wheeling, which suffered its first loss after six straight wins, was jumping out to a 2-0 lead.

“I think that let both teams know that we were going to be in the game the whole way,” Means said.

The end of regulation was wild, with Palatine first failing to score on a pair of man-up sequences before finally going ahead on a converted rebound with 13 seconds left.

Wheeling quickly got the ball into position on a do-or-die possession, and Andy Eiter fired a bullet into a corner out of Sommerfeld’s reach to tie it with 3.6 seconds left.

Behrens finished with 3 goals and Keith McIntosh had 2 for Palatine. Clarke Jensen led the way for Wheeling with 3 and Eiter had 2.

“We’ve played from behind before a lot,” said Means. “I’d prefer it if we didn’t do it so often — it seems like we’ve had to come back to win the games we’ve won. But I like it that our guys didn’t let it get them down when we got behind.”