By Mike Clark
There aren’t a lot of high school coaches who have to give the speech Nate Cruz delivered last year when he joined the Curie boys water polo coaching staff.
“I grew up with a lot of these kids out of the (Chicago) Park District,” Cruz said. “And I told them the first thing, my first day here last year, ‘Look, we were friends in the past but when we’re in this pool it’s strictly business.'”
Then, Cruz was a 19-year-old volunteer assistant coach just done with his own playing days at St. Rita. Now he’s the head coach and enjoying the biggest win of his brief career, 4-2 over visiting Young on Monday evening.
Milton Gama scored two goals while David Montefur and Marlon Rodriguez added one each for the Condors (14-7), who avenged a loss to the Dolphins in last year’s Public League championship.
“It means a lot,” Cruz said of the win. “Whitney Young has a good program, coach Angelo (Espinoza) does a good job with those boys. … It’s been a rivalry since I was a kid.”
“I know a lot of guys who’ve come to Curie and a lot of guys who went to Whitney Young. It’s always back and forth, city finals.”
The rivalry actually starts even earlier for many of the players, who grew up playing the game at either Harrison Park in Pilsen or McGuane Park in Bridgeport.
The low score wasn’t a surprise to either coach, given the venue. Curie has what’s known as a shallow-deep pool — shallow at one end, deep at the other — which allows each goalie to stand up, rather than tread water, for half the game. It’s also not as big as some suburban pools.
“In a small pool you always expect a defensive game,” Espinoza said. “It’s easy to stop teams when the pool’s so small. In a wider pool it’s a lot harder to stop teams.”
The game was 1-0 Curie after one quarter, 2-0 after two quarters. The action picked up late, when a three-goal back-and-forth left the Condors up 4-1 with a little over three minutes remaining. Young closed the scoring with 1:43 to play.
“I knew it was gonna be a low-scoring game,” Cruz said. “Offensively, I feel they’re better. They have big threats shooting-wise. Defensively we go back and forth. We played a zone, tried to cancel out their big man (Aleksandar Dale, also a standout football player for the Dolphins).”
“And defensively they crashed on (us) as well. We got lucky with our shots and we were fortunate a lot of their shots hit the posts.”
Gama was glad to gain some redemption.
“We were actually pretty fired up,” he said. “The same thing happened last year, we beat them in conference. But in city (finals) we fell short by one point. And honestly, I took full responsibility for causing that to happen. … What this game means to me, and us, is we can beat any team. We just have to put our mind to it.”
Young (8-6) beat almost everyone last spring, becoming the first Public League team to play for a state title since the IHSA series began in 2002. The Dolphins lost 13-11 to New Trier in the final. This has been a transition year.
“We have a lot of freshmen and sophomores and only three or four seniors,” Espinoza said. “So it’s tough, but we’ll get there.”
