Nitros’ offense heats up in a hurry

BURBANK — After seeing how close the Burroughs High boys’ water polo team played Glendale’s archrival Hoover in the first half on Tuesday, the Nitros made sure not to fall into the same predicament when they met the Indians in a Pacific League match at Burroughs on Thursday.

The match was never close, as Glendale scored the first 10 goals and had little trouble holding off Burroughs for a 15-4 win.

“It’s always important for us to get a big lead early,” said Glendale Coach Forest Holbrook, who got three goals apiece from Shant Tokatyan, Vahagn Gharagozyan and Vartan Mamikonyan. “One of our goals every game is to come out and get a quick lead and we were able to do that and we’re really happy with that.”

Glendale (15-6, 4-1 in league) led, 5-0, by the end of the first quarter after getting goals from Mamikonyan, David Grigorian, Martin Narinyan, Manuk Hakobyan and Martik Chatalyan. Nine Nitros scored in the match, as the team seemed to have plenty of sources of offense to fill the void left by senior hole/set Gor Asryan’s season suspension incurred on Tuesday as a result of his second flagrant misconduct violation of the year.

“It’s tough for us, Gor has always been a leader with our team, he still is a leader with our team,” said Holbrook of his top scorer from last season. “We’re faced with a difficult challenge, but luckily we have strong enough boys who are mature enough that they will be able to pick up where we’re going to miss out on Gor.

“We’re going to recover from this. Our season’s not over.”

Down, 10-0, with less than three minutes gone by in the second quarter, Burroughs held the Nitros scoreless for the next 3:11 seconds before Martin Ortega notched the first Indians goals at the 54-second mark.

Burroughs (1-4 in league) then opened the second half with back-to-back goals from Aaron Read and Ortega within the first two minutes. But by the 2:09 mark, Glendale had made it up and then some on goals from Cole Veloz, Gharagozyan and David Papazian.

“We didn’t come out to play today,” said Burroughs Coach Danny Garcia, whose team played Hoover to a 5-5 first-half tie on Tuesday before losing, 13-7. “Our heads weren’t in the match right from the first whistle. We gave up a goal in the first 20 seconds. We weren’t playing team defense and when it was time for us to go on offense, we weren’t running our plays.”