Batavia steamwrolls Oswego

Rain stopped St. Charles East, Geneva and St. Charles North from playing its home openers on Tuesday.

It didn’t stop Batavia and neither could Oswego.

The Bulldogs were able to play at their preferred pace, created many scoring opportunities and finished a few times in each half, to cruise past the Panthers, 6-0.

Senior Cody Balogh scored twice, fellow seniors Anthony Torres, Eduardo Cuautle and Aaron McNamara also found the back of the net, as did sophomore John Barnes.

“It felt good to win 6-0,” Balogh said. “I think we attacked well and got up quick in transition. That’s what we’ve been working on a lot coming into the season.”

Playing into the wind in the first half, it took the Bulldogs more than midway into the opening half before they jumped ahead, 1-0. Balogh assisted on a header by Torres with 19:36 remaining and it seemingly ignited Batavia. Shortly thereafter, the Bulldogs scored on a nice play in transition when Cuautle dished off to Balogh with 15:57 remaining to make it 2-0.

They extended the lead to 3-0 at halftime when Cuautle scored with just 1:10 remaining.

“That’s our game plan this year, to get at it against every team,” Torres said. “If we go down we’re not going to stop. We’re going to get back up and keep bringing it.”

Oswego (0-1-0) had some scoring opportunities, but didn’t put too much pressure on Batavia senior keeper Ben Steskal. The Panthers probably needed an early second half score to stall the momentum, but the Bulldogs went ahead and did the scoring.

McNamara scored an unassisted goal just a few minutes into the second half and Balogh added his second goal of the evening with 36:05 remaining. The rout was on.

“We talked about the first five minutes of the second half, putting them down quickly,” Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco said. “They’re creative players. I have a lot of creative players and a lot of guys that have some nice chemistry together. You kind of saw that several times and I’m hoping that will continue.”

Batavia (1-0-0) was by no means perfect in its execution, although it’s tough to look for negatives when you beat a strong program like Oswego by half a dozen. Still, the Bulldogs failed to finish on a handful of opportunities.

“There were chances out there and I don’t like to necessarily leave them out there,” Gianfrancesco said. “What I liked to see is whenever they missed the chance, they forgot about them and kept coming back and attacking them, and not putting their head down and just giving up.”

For a team featuring a roster of 18 players, 14 which are seniors, it was a strong beginning for what Batavia hopes will be a very successful year.

“We’re looking to just keep the ball rolling,” Balogh said. “It was a nice start of the season and know we just want to build on it.”