The Palo Alto Vikings girls varsity water polo team defeated the Johansen Vikings 8-7 Friday in the Paly’s third game of the NorCal Championships. Paly came back from an early two-goal deficit to force its second overtime game of the day. Earlier, Paly beat Menlo-Atherton 6-5 in double overtime and lost to Rio Americano 12-6.

Johansen won the opening sprint and traded turnovers with Palo Alto on the game’s first drive. With 4:42 left in the first period, Johansen was the first on the board. After regaining possession, two of Johansen’s fielders passed steadily through the Palo Alto defense to score. A minute later, Johansen scored again to make the score 2-0.

Palo Alto responded quickly after senior goalie Talia Kori’s first save, with fielder Hallie Kennan making her first steal and then scoring Palo Alto’s first goal, cutting Johasen’s lead to 2-1 through the end of the first quarter.

Palo Alto gave up two more goals in the second quarter, before Kori made another save on a close shot. Senior fielders Kennan and Christy Campbell and junior fielder Tara Murao all scored in the final three minutes of the half to tie the game 4-4.

The game stayed tied through the third quarter as both teams traded goals to make the score 5-5, with Campbell scoring again for Paly.

Johansen quickly took the lead with under five minutes remaining until one of its fielders was ejected. Paly took timeout a minute later and then quickly made the score 6-6 on a shot by Kennan.

“The ejections really affected our game,” Johansen coach Brent Bholender said. “We were missing two of our starters [because of them].”

Johansen scored with 2:24 remaining to take the lead, but Paly countered with a quick passing strategy to set up Murao’s second score and send the game in to overtime.

In its second overtime game of the day, Paly controlled the ball in the sudden-death period, winning the sprint and passing between its senior fielders to get the ball back to Kennan, who scored just 23 seconds into the period to win the game.

“I just kind of wanted it to be over,” Kennan said. “We had two really hard games [earlier] and it was fun to play but we were just really tired.”

Paly’s next game will be against the Clovis West Golden Eagles 9 a.m. Saturday at Sacred Heart. If the Paly Vikings lose to Clovis West, they will play again at 1 p.m. for 7th place in the 16-team tournament, while a win will land them in a match at 2 p.m. for 5th place.