Water polo fans on Bainbridge Island got an early glimpse of what could be this year’s state championship game Oct. 22.

The Spartans scored four-consecutive goals in the final five minutes to beat Curtis 15-12. It’s not much of a stretch saying they could meet for the title, since the two teams have dominated prep water polo the past few years.

The win not only evened the regular-season series at one game apiece but also put the Spartans in position to enter the postseason as the No. 1 overall seed. Bainbridge entered the match needing a three-goal victory to gain that status after having dropped its Sept. 26 contest at Curtis by a pair of goals.

“Winning in your home pool always feels awesome,” Bainbridge coach Kristin Gellert said. “Every time we get to play Curtis is a good opportunity to work and test ourselves, and beating them is another thing.”

Gellert called the loss to the Vikings earlier in the season an important wake-up call for her team, which is seeking its first back-to-back championship since 1997. She noted how hard it is to repeat as champion in any sport but emphasized that the differences between her 2A club and the 4A giant Curtis calls for creativity in their particular case.

“If we have an uphill battle, it’s been placed in front of us. We have a smaller pool with a shallow end that means we don’t get all the experience shooting on a deep end, practicing counters and conditioning the same way teams like Curtis do.”

After approaching that first game against the Vikings this year with a defensive mindset, Bainbridge was quick to switch things up and go on the attack in their home waters. The Spartans tallied four goals in the first quarter, two from RJ Rossart and one each for Elias Dean and Ryan Rich. The Vikings evened the score early in the second, but the Spartans maintained a 7-6 lead on goals from Rossart, Dean and Beckett Lipton.

The Spartans’ lead would remain just one, a score of 10-9 at the end of the third, but with the score at 11-11, a shot from Lucas Cuellar-Carpenter skipping off the water and into the goal sparked a four-goal run in the game’s final minutes.

“It’s great to get to show that heart, a good team culture, strong leadership and effort goes a long way,” Gellert said. “You can’t let the game and the moment get too big for you. By the end of our last game with them, we did not play our best game, and this was a great game while giving us an opportunity to keep working on things.”

Rossart led the Spartans with six goals, followed by Cuellar-Carpenter with three and Rich and Dean with two apiece. Lipton and Jonas Fritzsche each finished with one goal.

Spartan Jack Rogowski keeps the pressure on while playing defense in the third quarter.