PHOTOS: Northwood rallies for 10-9 win over Costa Mesa and advances to quarterfinal round

Northwood’s Cameron An gets ready to take a shot Thursday as William Harrington of Costa Mesa defends. (Photos courtesy Michael An, For OC Sports Zone)

Northwood’s boys water polo team held off an upset bid by Costa Mesa Thursday afternoon to capture a 10-9 victory in the second round of the CIF Division 3 playoffs at Northwood.

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The Timberwolves (21-9) move on to the quarterfinal round on Saturday against Westlake at Westlake.

Costa Mesa led by two goals in the first quarter and had a 7-6 lead going into the final quarter.

Cameron An tied the score for Northwood with a goal early in the fourth quarter. Leo Giessmann then scored to put the Timberwolves ahead 8-7. A goal by Costa Mesa’s Gavin Fisher tried it 8-8.

But a pair of goals by Max Abravanel in the final minutes helped Northwood move ahead 10-8. Costa Mesa’s Xander Luckett scored with less than 30 seconds left to cut the margin to one but Northwood was able to run out the clock.

“I don’t think we got worried,” said Northwood Coach Kyle Kim-E. “I knew we had a lot of opportunities and it seemed like the post kept blocking our shots. So we knew that as long as we converted some of our shots, we still had a good fighting chance but hats off to the Serano brothers (coaches Cody and Dustin) and Costa Mesa because that was a much different and much stronger team than we played in September (when Northwood won by five goals).”

Two big steals in the fourth quarter turned out to be critical for Northwood. Goalkeeper Adrian Fontao also had a save on a 5-meter shot earlier in the match and had a number of key stops.

“We saw after the first quarter we had to make some adjustments on defense,” Kim-E said. “The guys made the adjustments we needed to and I’m glad we also made some good stops on 6-on-5.”

Abravanel, double teamed throughout the match, scored four goals, Leo Giessmann had three goals and Cameron An two goals.

Costa Mesa (16-9) was led by Gabe Gerber, who had three goals and Todd Anderson and Fisher, who had two goals each.

The Mustangs were able to play a solid match and give the Timberwolves all they could handle.

“We started out slow,” Abravanel said. “We persevered. We didn’t want to give anything up in our home pool. We’re never going to under-estimate our opponent. We’re always going to come out and try and give our best effort. We came in, we thought we had a pretty good game plan. They caught us off guard a little bit.

“But we made some good adjustments in the second half and I think that’s what really won the game for us.”

Costa Mesa assistant Dustin Serano, who teams up with his brother, Cody, said he was pleased with the Mustangs’ effort.

“I’m super proud, we were replacing a senior from last year who had a lot of goals and carried us through the playoffs,” Dustin Serano said. “The boys rallied all season long. We had great games against Servite and Damien. We lost to (Northwood) by five the last time we played them so for us to be two goals up, one or two goals down and back and forth, I couldn’t be more proud.. We know Kyle coaches a great team and to compete against him as well as we did, we were really proud.

“We were in quarters last year, we were hoping to get back again. It was solid leadership from start to finish.”

Serano was also pleased with the play of goalkeeper Joseph Palmblade, one of the team captains along with Fisher.

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