Naperville North upends No. 1 New Trier
If it turns out Friday night's Naperville Invitational semifinal was a preview of the state girls soccer championship game - and it very well could be - Naperville North would love to repeat this result next month.
The Huskies tripped up state No. 1-ranked New Trier 3-1 at Naperville Central. The Huskies will play Barrington - a 3-1 overtime winner over St. Charles East in another state championship-caliber match - in the tournament final at noon Saturday at Naperville Central.
"They're No. 1 in the state, so this was huge," Huskies junior Maddie Krecji said. "Like (coach Steve Goletz) was telling us, it's just like a state final four game. Hopefully, later on we will have another shot at them."
"You want to get to that final game here," added New Trier coach Jim Burnside. "It's a great tournament. But you look across all the semifinal teams, they're great teams. I thought (the Huskies) played really well tonight. I thought they kept us under pressure."
The match couldn't have started any better for the Huskies (11-1). Off a Morgan Krause corner kick, Allison Svoboda scored her fourth goal of the season from point-blank range just 90 seconds into the match.
"That was a great ball from Morgan," Svoboda said. "We knew we had to come out strong. ... we knew we needed to come out and make an impact, make them nervous to play us. We're a great team. If we came out strong, we knew we would make them doubt themselves a little bit."
New Trier (17-1) evened the score on Celia Frei's penalty kick in the 51st minute, and they appeared to have the momentum to get another goal. Then Krecji stepped up with her fifth goal of the season.
Krecji scored in the 54th minute off an Abbie Boswell assist for a 2-1 Huskies lead.
"It was really exciting to know that (three) minutes earlier they just scored," Krecji said. "(Boswell) put a great ball up. I was wide open over at the end and a perfect ball for me to finish."
Boswell scored again in the waning seconds to finish the game.
It was an unusual final score for the Trevians, who had given up only 4 goals all season. Naperville North had two more goals waved off, one for offsides, one because a New Trier player suffered a head injury just before the shot and the referee whistled the play dead immediately.
"For our back four to hold New Trier to nothing in the run of play, just give up a penalty kick, I thought we did a pretty good job against them," Goletz said. "That's about as talented of a team as I've seen in a long time, and I know they even had a couple of kids not playing tonight."
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