Defense paves way for Glendale against Arroyo Valley
GLENDALE — Entering the season, the Glendale High boys’ water polo team believed it had the ability to score a lot of goals.
What the Nitros were curious to see was how their defense would stand up. It’s fared rather well during the first month of the season and that’s good news for the Nitros with the start of Pacific League play just around the corner.
Glendale surged to an early lead and allowed only one second-half goal to secure a 19-5 nonleague home win against Arroyo Valley on Thursday.
“We have a pretty good offense, but we’re just trying to get better on defense each match,” Glendale third-year coach Narek Vardanian said. “We’ve talked a lot before about being able to close out matches by playing strong defense.
“We just want to be in position where we can keep developing on defense and we’ll do that by getting in some quality practices.”
Glendale (6-1) didn’t give up a goal in the second half until less than a minute was left in the match.
“I like the way we’ve been playing on defense and we still know we can get better,” said Glendale sophomore goalkeeper Ronald George, who finished with 12 saves. “We have the ability to pressure other teams into making mistakes and get counter-attacks.
“I think we are getting better each match on defense and it was maybe one of our best performances of the season. We’re having better workouts at practice and I think we have a bright future.”
Glendale will begin league play with a home match against Arcadia on Tuesday.
George received plenty of support from his teammates. Glendale never trailed and held a 10-4 halftime advantage.
Amo Tatos finished with a team-high five goals for Glendale. The Nitros also got four goals from Vachik Gharibyan, three from Leo Grossman, two each from Nick Schmitt and Gevork Karapetyan and one apiece from Hike Pashaian, Michael Georgizian and Hagop Duvenjian.
The Nitros got one goal each from Gharibyan and Karapetyan in the final two minutes of the first quarter to take a 4-2 lead.
A man-advantage goal by Gharibyan extended Glendale’s lead to 8-4 with 2:54 to go in the second quarter. Later in the quarter, the Nitros got goals 31 seconds apart from Schmitt and Georgizian to make it 10-4.
Karapetyan and Tatos scored one goal each in the third quarter to make it 12-4. Tatos tallied three goals in the fourth quarter.
“We just want to keep building some momentum heading in to league,” Vardanian said. “There are some very good teams in our league and we want to be able to handle ourselves and show we can play hard.”
Arroyo Valley (3-5) got three goals from Giovani Ochoa and two from Emiliano Flores.
Twitter: @TCNCharlesRich
