Dylan Patist scores seven goals and Woodbridge tops Northwood 16-9 in PCL match

Dylan Patist had a big scoring day for Woodbridge. (Photo Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone)

Woodbridge and Northwood have had some close, intense and competitive battles in recent years in boys water polo.

To see the slide show, please click on the first photo

Max Abravanel of Northwood is defended by Solan Kedzie of Woodbridge.
Photo courtesy Michael An, For OC Sports Zone

Dylan Patist of Woodbridge winds up for a shot as Danny Kim of Northwood defends.
Photo Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone

Solan Kedzie of Woodbridge gets ready to take a shot as Christopher Pukszta of Northwood defends.
Photo courtesy Michael An, For OC Sports Zone

But Woodbridge controlled Tuesday’s Pacific Coast League match from the start defeating Northwood 16-9 at Northwood. The defending league champion Warrriors (2-0 in league) had a seven-goal lead at halftime.

Senior Dylan Patist, who has committed to UC Irvine, took over the match, scoring seven goals for Woodbridge. Riley Pittman, who has committed to play water polo at Stanford, had three goals and Nikola Mirkovic two goals for the Warriors.

“Dylan goes in streaks and that’s a good example when he plays really well and is shooting well he can do that,” said Woodbridge Coach Matt Campbell.

Patist said the Warriors concentrated on defense.

“We knew we could put goals away but we needed to focus on our defense, ” Patist said. “We know offensively we can put teams away but if we let them hang around it’s going to be harder for us to go back to back.”

Woodbridge held a 5-2 lead after one quarter and led 9-2 at halftime.

“One down, one more to go,” Campbell said of this week’s league schedule which has the Warriors playing Beckman on Thursday. “We never try and overlook anybody, especially Beckman and Northwood. They always play us tough and we know it’s the league leaders playing each other so you got to come in and play well.

“We play well some days, we don’t play well some other days. So, we need to work a little bit on our consistency, but I was really pleased with today’s performance.”

Max Abravanel scored five goals and Leo Giessmann had three goals for Northwood (1-1 in league).

“We knew Woodbridge was going to be a tough game,” said Northwood Coach Kyle Kim-E. “They’re an experienced squad with a lot of different offensive threats. We tried our best to match up where we could. I thought we could have done better on both ends of the ball, but we still had good moments on offense and defense.

“Our starting goalie was unavailable for play and Josh Sellwood stepped in and played great. Despite the score, it was still a good game for us and helps us get to what we want to achieve in our division.”

-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com