TOWAMENCIN- Continuing their undefeated league season, the North Penn Knights boys water polo team saddled up and took a trip to battle the Wissahickon Trojans. The Knights (6-0 conference, 8-1 overall) vanquished the Trojans (8-2 overall) with a 17-7 win. 

“We had a couple of slow games before so having a good one where we scored a bunch of goals and played some pretty good defense really boosts our confidence and gets our teamwork back together for the big tournaments up ahead,” senior captain and goalie Danny Dunigan emphasized.

Starting off the first quarter strong, the Knights found their way into the back of the net three times with goals scored by junior Owen Fritz, senior captain Aidan Faikish, and senior Nathan Rawa. With the Knights maintaining a good defense throughout the first quarter, the Trojans only managed to score one goal ending the quarter 3-1 with North Penn up.

“I think we are very balanced. This is one of the first years we have a lot of good guys on the perimeter. We have a very good center, we have a very good goalie so we are really showing our depth when we play,” varsity head coach Jason Grubb stated.

From the start of the second quarter, the Knights kept full possession of the ball. After a missed shot rebounded the ball back into the Knight’s hands, it was made possible for their fourth goal of the night to be scored. The ball was passed around looking for an open shot when senior captain Chase Dimauro passed the ball to Rawa, assisting his goal. Not even a minute after, Rawa comes back to score another one giving the Knights a big lead.

“It obviously wasn’t perfect but a lot of our fundamentals look a lot better now which is good, especially against a team like that who we tend to sometimes struggle against. It’s good to see our passing, communication, and our movement is a lot better now so it’s going in the right direction,” Rawa explained.

The rest of this quarter consisted of three goals from Faikish and four saves by Dunigan. Wissahickon scored two more ending the half with a score of 8-3.

“I think that it was just a mixture of communicating and actually hitting our shots. Definitely just getting them on net is the goal,” senior Andrew Davis emphasized.

Entering the third quarter and only a minute in, Faikish passed the ball to Rawa who went 1v1 with the goalie firing a hard ball right through the goalie’s hands into the net. Wissahickon came back to score another one, but quickly after, Rawa scored his fifth goal of the night yet again plowing right through the goalie’s hands.

The quarter finished out with a pass from Davis to Fritz who faked out the goalie tucking one in the back of the net and a 5-meter shot taken by Faikish which resulted in a goal ending the quarter with a score of 12-4.

“Some of the strengths we had is that we really started working as a team, where a couple of our other games we were kind of lacking communication so I think that really helped out,” Dunigan said.

The last quarter of the game started off with the ball in North Penns possession. Fritz scored a goal 30 seconds in which was then followed by a Wissahickon goal. The back and forth continued as Danny Mitchell tucked one away for North Penn, then again was followed by a Wissahickon goal, then Fritz scored again, which was again followed by another Wissahickon goal.

At three minutes left, Mason Dimauro drifted the ball over the goalie’s head, and to finish the game off, Dunigan played a long ball all the way down to Dimauro who scored the final goal for the night.

“We got our movement back, started running some drives and it really worked pretty well,” Dunigan stated.

The boys will be back to play Monday, October 3rd at Souderton.

“It definitely feels good. It’s nice to know that we are working on the stuff now that we are going to need to execute a lot better especially in big games like next weekend. We are turning in the right direction as we head towards the end of the season,” Rawa said.