Juan Zavaleta scored the winning goal in overtime as the Hush Puppies scored a 10-9 victory in the finals of the 2012 Abierto de Chile at the San Cristobal Polo Club Sunday afternoon.
Zavaleta tore up the first chukker, scoring three consecutive goals for a 3-0 Hush Puppies lead in the opening minutes of play. HSBC-Casa Silva got a single goal from Nachi Heguy, but trailed after one period of play, 3-1.
HSBC-Casa Silva turned the tables on Zavaleta and company in the second chukker, however. Led by an opening goal from Heguy, HSBC-Casa Silva put up three unanswered goals. The period ended with HSBC-Casa Silva on top of a 4-3 score.
The Hush Puppies bounced back in the third, outscoring their opponents 3-1. When the bell sounded to signal the end of the first half, HSBC-Casa Silva was trailing, 6-5.
Both teams dug in defensively as second half play began. HSBC-Casa Silva managed a single goal to knot it up. With neither team able to score for the remainder of the chukker, they took the 6-6 deadlock into the fifth period.
The Hush Puppies found their offense again in the fifth, putting up a pair of goals while holding HSBC-Casa Silva to a single goal. With one chukker of regulation play left, the Hush Puppies guarded a precarious 8-7 lead.
The Hush Puppies found themselves ahead 9-8 with one minute left to play in the sixth when HSBC-Casa Silva got the tying goal from Matias Vial to force the game into a sudden-death overtime period.
Despite their best efforts, Zavaleta broke through the HSBC-Casa Silva defenses a final time to score the winning goal in the 10-9 Hush Puppies win.
Eduardo Novillo Astrada played as a member of the La Aguada/Las Monjitas team in the recently completed Argentine Open and is a regular at the International Polo Club, having registered wins in the C. V. Whitney Cup, the USPA Piaget Gold Cup and the U. S. Open championship over the years, and may well turn up on one of this season’s teams as well.