ANNAPOLIS, Md. — For the first time since Gerald Ford was in the White House and John Lennon’s “Whatever Gets You Through the Night” was ruling the charts in November 1974, the Fordham University Rams will play for a league championship. No. 18-ranked/top seed Fordham punched its ticket to the 2021 Mid-Atlantic Water Polo Conference (MAWPC) title game at the United States Naval Academy’s’ Lejeune Hall on Sunday, November 21, at 1:30 p.m., by rallying back in regulation and tallying the lone goal in overtime to down No. 5 seed Wagner College, 11-10 in overtime, during the first semifinal at the MAWPC Championship tournament.
The 2021 MAWPC-East regular season champion, Fordham (25-6, 11-1 MAWPC-East) – which last appeared in a league title game with back-to-back appearances and losses to Yale University (1973) and Bucknell University (1974) – has never won a conference championship nor earned a bid to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship. Both blights can be removed from the Rams’ legacy on Sunday, November 21, as Fordham will face the victor of a semifinal pitting host/No. 20 the United States Naval Academy and George Washington University.
Fordham finished 2-0 versus Navy (17-10 W, 10-9 W) during the regular season, while upending George Washington (15-7 W, 13-11 W) as the team will seek to continue a resurgence of the Rams’ program.
This marks the ninth time since 1987 that the Rams have competed in a league championship tournament as the team placed Fifth (2009 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Eighth (2010 at Bucknell University), 11th (2013 at Brown University) and Ninth (2014 at Navy; 2015 at MIT) at the Eastern/Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Championship prior to Third (2016 at Bucknell) and Fourth (2017 at Navy; 2018 at home; 2019 at Bucknell) place marks at the MAWPC Championship.
Fordham will have a chance to add to Empire State institutions litany of success at league championship tournaments as New York institutions Queens College (1995, 1996, 1998, 2001), St. Francis College Brooklyn (1999, 2000, 2004, 2007) and Wagner (2017) have previously combined for nine runner-up placements and six titles (Queens: 1997, 2002; St. Francis Brooklyn: 2005, 2010, 2012, 2013).
Wagner (17-16, 6-6 MAWPC-East) – which previously finished Fifth (2016, 2019), Second (2017) and Third (2018) in its four prior appearances in the league championship field – will meet the loser of the Navy-GW game at Noon for Third Place.
The Rams needed to rally back multiple times – including overcoming a 9-6 deficit with 1:36 left in the third quarter – to force overtime and defeat the Seahawks for the third time in as many meetings this year.
Fordham jumped on the scoreboard first as Christos Loupakis (So., Athens, Greece/Costeas Geitonas) put away a frozen-rope man-up shot with 5:52 left on the first quarter clock to draw first blood. Mattia Bognolo (Fr., Canberra, Australia) delivered the equalizer at 5:37, but Sebastian Zapatero (Jr., Venice, Calif./Santa Monica) buried a man-up bid at 4:41 to return the Rams to the lead at 2-1.
The game began to turn in favor of Wagner as Vuk Bulajic (Sr., Belgrade, Serbia/King’s College) and Shaked Yacoby (Jr., Hod HaSharon, Israel/Mosenson HodHaSharon) turned the table on Fordham by torquing in strikes at 3:52 and 3:00, respectively, to put the Seahawks ahead 3-2. Fordham erased the deficit prior to the concluding horn of the first quarter as Lucas Nieto Jasny (Fr., Barcelona, Spain/Col-legi Closa) beat Wagner goalie Ethan Zirh (Sr., Sydney, Australia/Castle Hill) with 38 seconds left to knot the game at three-all.
Wagner pulled ahead, however, in the first two minutes of the second quarter as Yacoby (7:33) and Jack Leighton (Sr., Lake Forest, Calif./El Toro) (6:13) put away shots to give the Seahawks a 5-3 advantage on the scoreboard.
Fordham rallied back as Jacopo Parrella (Fr., Naples, Italy/Umberto I State Classical) swished a five-meter penalty shot at 5:33 before burying a man-up bid at 3:35 to square the squads at five-all.
He completed a hat-trick at 2:30 by netting a natural goal to push Fordham ahead again at 6-5, but Oliver Fodor (Jr., Budapest, Hungary/Szent Istvan Gimnazium) and Kyle Chambers (Fr., Thousand Oaks, Calif./Westlake) closed out the first half by ticking off back-to-back tallies at 1:58 and one second, respectively, to flip the script and give Wagner a 7-6 lead at intermission.
The margin ballooned to 9-6 in the closing moments of the third quarter as Bulajic (2:22, man-up) and Fodor (1:36) began to drive home the coffin nails on Fordham’s title hopes.
Dimitris Koukias (Sr., Athens, Greece/Athens College) kept Fordham’s hopes alive, however, by putting a way a shot with four seconds left to chip the Rams’ deficit down to 9-7 heading into the final eight minutes of regulation.
George Papanikolaou (Fr., Athens, Greece/Athens College) continued to add to Fordham’s comeback hopes by driving in a shot at 4:55 of the fourth quarter to shave Wagner’s lead down to 9-8. A penalty shot by Bulajic at 4:21 appeared to dash the dream of the Rams’ making their inaugural league title game appearance in nearly 50 years, but Koukias played hero in putting away natural (3:19) and man-up (1:18) goals to tie the game at 10-all.
Fordham goalie Thomas Lercari (Fr., Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif./Palos Verdes) performed his own magic in the final 70 seconds stopping three shots and withstanding a last second push by the Seahawks to force overtime.
Neither team was able to muster much in overtime until Hans Zdolsek (Gr., Linkoping, Sweden/Katedralskolan/Whittier College) came off the post on a set play and pounded the ball like Mjolnar on a power-play bid with 1:01 left in the second three-minute OT frame for the deciding blow.
For Fordham, Parrella and Koukias both contributed three goals, while Zapatero, Zdolsek, Loupakis, Papanikolaou and Jasny each found the back of the cage once. In cage, Lercari made 10 saves to earn the win.
| 1st Q | 2nd Q | 3rd Q | 4th Q | OT1 | OT2 | FINAL | |
| Wagner College | 3 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 10 |
| No. 18 Fordham University | 3 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 11 |
| Fordham Goals: | Jacopo Parrella (3); Dimitris Koukias (3); Sebastian Zapatero; Hans Zdolsek; Christos Loupakis; George Papanikolaou; Lucas Nieto Jasny; | ||||||
| Wagner Goals: | Vuk Bulajic (3); Oliver Fodor (2); Shaked Yacoby (2); Mattia Bognolo; Kyle Chambers; Jack Leighton | ||||||
| Saves: | Fordham – Thomas Lercari (10) ; Wagner – Ethan Zirh (14) | ||||||
| Exclusions: | Fordham – 3; Wagner – 10 | ||||||
| Advantage Opportunities: | Fordham – 6-for-10 ; Wagner – 2-for-3 | ||||||
| Sprints: | Fordham – 2-for-6 (1st, 3rd) ; Wagner – 4-for-6 (2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th) | ||||||
| Cards/Misconducts: | RC – Wagner (Zsombor Gyemant, post-game) | ||||||
| Officials: | Mike Gordon; Connor Roberson | ||||||
