South Elgin rolls into championship game

Hampshire never had a chance.

With 7 first-half goals, South Elgin advanced to Friday's 2:30 p.m. championship match against West Chicago with a convincing 8-0 win over the Whip-Purs in action at the South Elgin Spring Fling Girls Soccer Tournament at Streamwood's Millenium Field Thursday afternoon.

"We hadn't played in a few days and the girls were ready to get back on a field and play a game," said South Elgin coach Tiffany Disher. "The girls were really ready to play and we got off to a great start. We are certainly ready for the challenge of playing a very good West Chicago team for the championship. They are a very tough, physical team."

The Storm (3-0) needed only 6 minutes and 10 seconds into the match to dent the scoreboard first.

Off perfectly set up passes from Grace Franks and Ella Struwig, Melissa Greco scored her first of 3 goals on the day to give the Storm a 1-0 lead.

One minute and 1 second later, South Elgin grabbed a 2-0 advantage on a goal by Delaney Kelleher off an assist by Weronika Noyszewski with 32:49 left in the first half.

The rout was on.

The Storm, who outshot Hampshire 21-1, scored 5 more times in the half, 2 by Greco and a goal each by Kelleher, Citlali Sanchez and Kristen Schill.

Franks collected 4 saves during the first 40 minutes.

"We were really ready to play after the layoff," said Greco. "We have a lot of girls who can score. We had a lot of good runs and we were able to get good shots off of switch offs."

With the second 40 minutes sliced in half to 20 minutes because of the 7-goal rule, South Elgin scored only once in the second half on a tally by Noyszewski.

Hampshire coach Sara O'Toole was encouraged by her team's play to begin the game and in the second half.

"The first six minutes we were playing great defense," she said. "We were checking their scorers and were not allowing them to get good shots. Then we started to let the scorers open and they started scoring. It is tough to open the season against very good teams like Sycamore and South Elgin."

O'Toole has utilized both Kaila Kienzler and Catie Kochanski in the goal during the first two games. Kienzler collected 7 saves for the Whip-Purs (0-2) while Kochanski had 6.

Bartlett 2, Glenbard South 0: Jenna Noesen scored off an assist from Shannon Brohan, then Brohan scored off an assist from Mariela Alba to lead the Hawks (2-2) to a win in the South Elgin tournament. Nykia Wetterman earned her first varsity shutout with 5 saves. The Hawks will play Sycamore at 12:30 p.m. at Millennium Field in Streamwood in the final round of the tournament.