Dundee-Crown completes unbeaten regular season
The Dundee-Crown boys soccer team completed an unbeaten regular season Tuesday in dominating fashion.
Salvador Rodriguez scored twice and added an assist as the Chargers defeated Jacobs, 5-0, in Carpentersville.
“Our four years have been great, but this year the chemistry helped us,” said Rodriguez, a senior. “We’re like family and that helped us get through every single game. The best year we’ve ever had.”
The victory earned D-C (19-0-1, 6-0) the outright Fox Valley Conference Valley Division title, the program’s first league championship since 2005 and just the second in program history. The only non-victory for the Chargers was a 0-0 tie against Hononegah. They start the postseason a week from today as the No. 3 seed in the Class 3A Streamwood regional. D-C will play No. 2 Larkin, which the Chargers beat 3-2 on Saturday, at 6:30 p.m. next Wednesday in the regional semifinals.
“We thought we would hit some bumps in the road,” D-C coach Rey Vargas said of unexpectedly going unbeaten. “We’ve been resilient. We’ve been able to pull off some wins that I was pretty impressed with.”
Rodriguez got the Chargers going against Jacobs, heading home a free kick from Francisco Nava with 17:04 remaining in the first half. Rodriguez then assisted on Gerardo Escorza’s goal with 3:29 left in the first half.
Juan Ramos and Paul Bach added goals in the first 12 minutes of the second half for a 4-0 Chargers lead. Rodriguez got his second goal off a scrum in front of the Jacobs penalty area after a corner kick with 19:41 remaining.
The Golden Eagles (6-13-1, 2-4) had just one shot on a goal, a long free kick from near midfield that was of no trouble to D-C goalkeeper Jose Gonzalez. Gonzalez’s best save came on a potential own goal with 5 minutes remaining in the first half.
“We when connected we got to the end line in the first half. We got some good service in,” Jacobs coach Anthony Cappello said. “It was just too far in between and we got caught defending a bit much. We forgot to attack a little bit.”