Girls Water Polo: Naperville North Fends Off Hornets

DARIEN – Naperville North junior water polo player Sofi Prorok just kept shooting for most of Thursday’s match against Hinsdale South.

Only one of her nine shots went in, but all of that action drew the defense toward her late in the fourth quarter. Recognizing that, she found Meghan Nerud for the game-winning goal with 1:20 left, giving the Huskies an 8-7 win.

“It was really, really frustrating because we really wanted to score and it was a close game,” Prorok said. “We had a close game last night, too (an overtime loss to New Trier). So, it was kind of frustrating to see the score. But I kept on trying.”

The most frustrating period of the game came in the third for Prorok. Hinsdale South took a 5-4 lead with 4:37 left in the third when Sarah Urquhart found Eleni Murphy for a goal. Over a three-minute stretch, Prorok had four shots saved and the score remained 5-4 Hornets going into the fourth.

But the Huskies, the No. 3 seed in next week’s Neuqua Valley Sectional, came out smoking in the fourth against the eighth-seeded Hornets.

Audrey Chien scored on a long shot 26 seconds into the quarter and 13 seconds after that Prorok scored her only goal of the game off of a Hinsdale South turnover to suddenly give Naperville North a 6-5 lead. But Hinsdale South hung in there and the lead never grew to more than one the rest of the quarter, though the Huskies never did relinquish the lead.

“I was hoping for a little more separation,” Naperville North assistant coach Britt Walk said. “We came out with a bang in the first part of the fourth quarter, but we got a little tired. We had a lot of girls play most of the game, so they started to tire out in the fourth quarter.”

Murphy tied the game at 6-6 for Hinsdale South with a shot from nearly the middle of the pool with 5:52 left, but Nerud followed a mere 23 seconds later by spinning and firing a shot to push the lead back to 7-6 for North.

Murphy struck again with another long shot with 2:31 left to tie it at 7-7 before Nerud’s heroics with 1:20 left gave North the lead for good at 8-7.

The lead was tenuous, however. Murphy hit the crossbar with another long shot with 1:03 left and the Hornets got a turnover in the final minute, but were unable to get off a quality shot to tie the game.

“I thought we were going to pull it out,” Hinsdale South assistant coach Beth Walker said. “We had some passing that we could have done better. Our girls were real calm. They kept pushing forward. They’re a phenomenal group of young women. Everything just moves forward for them.”

The performance was encouraging for the Hornets. Naperville North is ranked No. 16 in the state by illpolo.com and the Hornets are stuck hosting a play-in game Monday against No. 9 seed St. Charles East just to get to Wednesday’s Neuqua Sectional. They will tune up with Saturday’s West Suburban Conference meet at Lyons.

“I think the girls have a really good shot,” Walker said. “I think we have a really, really good chance to do well this weekend and give it a shot at sectionals.”

North knows what’s waiting at sectionals. The state’s No. 1 team is the Huskies’ cross-town rival, Naperville Central, also the top seed in the sectional. The Huskies open sectional play Wednesday in the fourth game of the night at Neuqua, a date with Hinsdale Central at 8:15 p.m.

“We’ve been doing pretty well,” Walk said. “We’re hoping sectionals will go in our favor. Central is going to be a tough team to beat, obviously. We hung in there against them, but they’re such a prestigious team that it’s hard to get them.”

The other sectional match-ups feature Naperville Central facing the Lockport/St. Charles North winner at 4:30 p.m., Metea Valley against Neuqua Valley at 5:45 p.m. and the Hinsdale South/St. Charles East winner against Waubonsie Valley at 7 p.m.