Water polo: Naperville North girls earn trip to state, rematch with defending champ Stevenson

In his first year as head coach, Naperville North’s Andy Bax has his girls water polo team headed to the state tournament.

The Huskies, who have lost only once on the season compared to 30 victories, overwhelmed Lincoln-Way East 17-7 Tuesday in the Hinsdale Central supersectional.

The Red Devils hosted both the boys and girls Elite Eight games. On the boys side, Brother Rice defeated Naperville North 14-4.

“This feels great,” said Bax. “The girls have worked hard, they’ve gelled together, they’re playing together and they’re learning where everyone is going to be in the water.”

Naperville North exploded out of the gate, scoring seven of the first eight goals in the initial period.

Junior Ava Podkasik scored three of those opening goals, while twin sister Mia accounted for another. The Huskies led 7-2 after one quarter.

“This is huge,” said Mia Podkasik. “We’ve been waiting for this all year. We came in prepared, and our team just had the fire inside to win this game.

“Honestly, we’ve been grinding every day at practice. We have a motto called ‘good, better, best’. It’s kind of where we play one game and we don’t look past that. Then we go on to the next game and just play hard and play fast.

“Every day we just grind, and that’s what gets us to where we are today.”

Lincoln-Way East got a spark to open the second quarter by scoring with 6:13 remaining, the goal coming from Lilly Brown, to cut into the Naperville North lead.

Then Naperville North’s Kat Pavlovich scored three of the next four tallies to extend the Huskies advantage, and they didn’t look back in the second half en route to the win.

The Huskies’ next game will be in the state semifinals at 7:45 p.m. Friday at Barrington. They’ll play Stevenson, which handed the Huskies their only defeat of the season on May 6, a tense 8-7 loss.

The Patriots are also the 3-time defending state champion.

“I think our girls are ready for the challenge,” coach Bax said. “It won’t be an easy task to the final but I think these girls can do it.”

Senior Teagan Murphy scored four goals for Lincoln-Way East. She’ll be continuing her water polo career at the next level after graduation, where she’ll compete for St. Mary’s of California. She’ll also be concentrating on her studies, with a goal of becoming a high school math teacher.

“I am just so proud of how this team came together this year,” Murphy said. “From where we started the season, we’ve grown so much. Being on this team is such an honor.”

The Griffins finished with a 21-10 record.

“Teagan is an extraordinary leader,” said Lincoln-Way East coach Steve Anderson of Murphy. “But the thing is, our team around her really showed what they can do. They showed that we have a lot of offensive firepower, and a perimeter that’s just willing to shoot. And defensively, we really stepped up.”

Boys game: It was no surprise to see Naperville North in the supersectionals. It’s the fifth consecutive year they’ve been to the Elite Eight, including last season when they won a state championship with a 7-6 win over New Trier in the title game.

But this year, they were a No. 4 sectional seed after losing five of seven starters to graduation. Tuesday they ran into a buzzsaw in Brother Rice.

The Crusaders now has a 31-1 record. Coincidentally, their only loss was to the Stevenson boys.

Brother Rice held a 3-0 lead entering the second quarter when the fire alarms went off, forcing all fans, players, coaches and officials to be escorted out of the building for safety’s sake. Luckily for the players, it was 70 degrees and sunny outside.

“Same thing happened to us two years ago at state,” said Naperville North senior Caden Tsao.

After a 20 minute delay, the “all clear” sign was given, and the contest continued a few ticks later. Brother Rice extended the lead to 5-0, but a goal by Landon Fennema of the Huskies made it 5-1.

Naperville North almost got closer, but a shot from Fennema 30 seconds later banged off the post. Then Brother Rice took over, and led 11-1 after three quarters.

Carter Seiple, Tsao, and JD Sandford scored fourth period goals for the Huskies.

“We’ve come a long way,” said Huskies coach Kelly Reif of her side. “We graduated a lot of kids from our state championship team, but we got these guys (this season) to believe that they could achieve anything they want with hard work. To win our sectional as a four seed was a huge accomplishment for us, but it’s a good team (Brother Rice) that we played out there tonight.”

Tsao is one of six seniors on the Naperville North roster this year.

“I’m just so proud of my teammates,” Tsao said, “and so thankful for my coaches.”