Lake Park preps for playoffs with win

Thursday was all about the seniors for Lake Park.

With playoff seeding set and the DuPage Valley Conference season complete, the Lancers celebrated the contributions of its seniors before it took on Fenton in a nonconference game as part of its Senior Night festivities in Roselle.

The Lancers squeaked past the Bison 2-1.

"Fenton was very aggressive, and with the way it was going, if the match were 90 minutes instead of 80 it could've been a different outcome," Lake Park coach Anthony Passi said. "We were able to get into the final third but couldn't get it into the net, but our defense held strong in back."

Lake Park (16-1-4) took a 1-0 lead with 18:30 left in the first half when senior Oliver Horgan converted a penalty kick. Horgan beat a defender downfield and had a breakaway opportunity that was denied when he was taken down in the box, which resulted in him being awarded a PK.

"I had a chance earlier that I ended up going wide on so I was lucky to get another shot," Horgan said. "It was pretty wet and slippery out here and we're used to turf, but we did enough to hold on and win."

Fenton (10-8-1) drew even at 1-1 on a goal from Alexis Mendoza, but the Lancers struck with less than a minute left in the first half when Pasquale Ottolino scored with just 43 seconds remaining before the break.

"You can never give up, even when there's not much time left," Ottolino said. "I got a nice cross and was just able to finish. It was big. It gave us a lot of momentum in the second half."

Neither team created much offensively in the second half, both exchanging a handful of scoring chances, but none that came to fruition.

"We've now played six ranked teams and we've tied one and lost five of them, which is unacceptable," Fenton coach Dave Alvarez said. "We compete with them and seem to be OK with that, but we're not winning and that's not enough. At the very least we should've tied, but we gave up a silly goal with 43 seconds left in the half."