St. Francis water polo rallies against Burbank to notch milestone win

BURBANK — Things were hardly in favor of the St. Francis High water polo team entering the second half of its nonleague match against Burbank on Thursday.

Trailing by five goals, the Golden Knights looked for a spark to ignite them in their quest for the program’s first victory. Once the fourth quarter rolled around, the Golden Knights found themselves in control.

St. Francis, a first-year varsity program, scored seven fourth-quarter goals en route to a 15-11 nonleague road win against the shorthanded Bulldogs.

“It’s great,” said St. Francis Coach Brady Lowdermilk, whose team is a freelance squad. “It will be exciting to go back to school and tell everybody about what we were able to accomplish.

“It’s just our second game, but it’s the second time now where I’ve seen our guys play so much better in the second half. Our starts have been a little bit too casual, but then they figure things out in the second half with respect to chemistry and being able to play a lot smarter.”

St. Francis (1-1) trailed, 10-5, at halftime before making its charge against a fatigued Burbank (0-2) squad. The Bulldogs began the 28-minute contest with just seven players and saw it reduced to six after Artush Gasparyan picked up his third ejection with 5:12 left in the third quarter. The Bulldogs had to play the remainder of the contest shorthanded.

St. Francis then began its comeback bid, getting three goals in less than two minutes late in the third quarter. Cole Gabriel-Rebmann scored to make it 10-8 with 28 seconds remaining in the third quarter.

The Golden Knights’ momentum continued heading into the fourth quarter. Maclean Ireland tied the score at 11 with 4:25 remaining and then Elijah Havens scored two straight goals in less than two minutes to make it 13-11. Havens’ first goal came with 3:55 to go before scoring again with 2:14 left.

“I think we picked up our pace after that ejection,” said Havens, who finished with four goals. “A lot of things got better, starting with our passing and finding the lanes to get off good shots.

“We kept thinking we’d have a shot if we stayed within ourselves. Coach Lowdermilk wants us to stick to the fundamentals. When we can do that, we have a shot.”

St. Francis got a match-high six goals from Aidan Marick. The Golden Knights also received two goals from Gabriel-Rebmann and one each from John Balog and Dante Valle.

Burbank didn’t seem to be bothered by its thin bench in the early going. The Bulldogs received three first-quarter goals from Brandon Wilson to take a 5-4 lead. Wilson paced the Bulldogs with four goals.

Burbank scored five unanswered goals in the second quarter to take a 10-4 lead. Gasparyan converted on a man-advantage goal to give Burbank an 8-4 lead with 4:18 to go in the first half. Gasparyan closed out the first-half scoring with 1:42 left.

Burbank Coach Allyson Young said the Bulldogs ran out of steam following Gasparyan’s final ejection.

“I think we were down after that,” Young said. “It’s sink or swim and we sank.

“I thought we did a lot of things well in the first half. It’s just tough with the ways things went from there. We have to get back to the way we played in the first half.”

The Bulldogs got three goals from Peter Youssef and one each from Alex Banjarjyan and Varuzhan Bilbulyan.

St. Francis and Burbank will meet again on Oct. 11 at Burbank.