Men’s Water Polo: Vikings pull out thrilling 14-13 overtime win over Cerritos

The Long Beach City College men's water polo team passed an early season test and came out on top of a 14-13 shootout over crosstown rival Cerritos College on Wednesday at LBCC.

The South Coast Conference win improved the Vikings to 3-2 overall and 1-0 in the SCC while Cerritos had its four-game winning streak snapped and fell to 10-4 and 1-1 in conference play.

After a relatively quiet first quarter, the teams flexed their muscles in the second. Cerritos held leads of 3-1 and 6-3 before the Vikings rallied back. LBCC closed out the second quarter with goals from freshmen Brock McColl and Zakk Parker to cuts the Falcon lead to 6-5 at halftime.

Cerritos opened the scoring in the third to go up 7-5 before LBCC answered with goals by Parker sophomore Mac Aakhus to tie the game 7-7. The squads exchanged leads once again before Cerritos held a 9-8 advantage heading into the fourth quarter.

The Vikings tied up the game and took the lead at 10-9 at the 4:40 mark after goals from sophomore Tony Frens and freshman Dylan Thompson. Cerritos responded with a goal from Chad Castro at 4:07 to tie the game before LBCC went ahead once again at 1:59 when Aakhus scored his third goal of the contest.

Moments later, Cerritos' TJ Tigerina sent the game to overtime with his equalizer goal with 1:40 left in the fourth.

In the first overtime period, Long Beach got a goal from freshman Ian Arnold while Tigerina scored again for the Falcons to set the score at 12-12 heading into the second and final overtime.

Thompson scored at the 2:39 mark for LBCC before Castro tied up the contest with 52 seconds left. On the Vikings next trip down the pool, sophomore Dor Apffel (pictured) scored the game-winner with 36 seconds left and Long Beach denied one last Cerritos push for the impressive win.

Aakhus led LBCC with three goals while the Vikings got two goals each from Parker, Apffel, Thompson, and Arnold. In goal, freshman Nikola Mihajlovic had nine saves over the first half and freshman Akio Saito totaled 12 saves over the remainder of the game.

Cerritos got a game-high five goals from Miguel Garcia and Michael Skinas had 19 saves in goal.

Long Beach returns to action on Saturday (Sep 22) when it travels to Pepperdine University to face Pepperdine and Pomona-Pitzer College in exhibition games.

Photo by Chris Ruiz