Niles West wins as Libertyville misfires

Getting organized on the field might have provided a better outcome for Libertyville’s girls soccer team.

The Wildcats suffered their third consecutive loss Tuesday night, as they fell to host Niles West 1-0 in a nonconference match in Skokie.

“I’d like to see us make better passes,” said Libertyville coach Scott Schinto, whose team dropped to 2-3. “We need to get better shots on the frame.

“We’re the ones that took things away because we couldn’t connect a pass. We were looking for weak-side balls and we couldn’t connect anything on the outside. We were serving balls in behind the goal, not taking shots and it equates to no success.”

The Wildcats dominated the possession and outshot the Wolves 9-3.

One of Libertyville’s best chances to score came in the 65th minute, when Kathleen Chapman fired a shot from 30 yards out off the crossbar.

“We obviously controlled the game,” Schinto said. “We have to score to win and we didn’t do it. We expected to play organized and we didn’t do it. We now have to go back to the drawing board.”

Wolves goalkeeper Jackie Cardenas stopped 9 shots.

Niles West (2-5) got its only goal in the 47th minute of play. Elizabeth Bruder took a pass from Vicki Tirovolas and found the back of the net.

The Wolves have played some good competition, including New Trier, Maine South, Glenbrook North and Deerfield.

“The teams we’ve played, I wouldn’t say they’ve been easy teams,” Niles West coach Brett Clish said. “(Libertyville) did put a lot of pressure on us. Of the chances that we had, we were able to capitalize. That’s what happens. Sometimes you have only two or three opportunities to get one in. That’s all it takes.”

Niles West played more defense in the second half, as Libertyville had the wind in its favor.

“Second half, we dropped more to a diamond then a flat back,” Clish said. “We knew (Libertyville) would try to hit more of the slots and brought back one of our forwards to congest things more. We knew that they would attack more with the wind. We wanted to have shots coming from outside the box.”