Willows eliminates Westminster Christian
The harsh reality Westminster Christian's girls soccer team had to swallow in its Class 1A regional semifinal loss to No. 2 seed Willows Academy was that the season essentially came to an end in the first 30 seconds of Wednesday's game.
A defensive turnover in the Warriors' backfield gave Willows forward Stephanie Sommers an open net from 25 yards out and the flood gates opened for 4 more goals in the Eagles' 5-0 win at Judson University.
Willows (10-5-3), which has won five-straight regional championships, advances to the regional final Friday against St. Edward at 4:30 p.m. while No. 3 Westminster (8-7), this year's Northeastern Athletic Conference champs, won't play for a regional title for the first time in 3 years.
"Willows is a great team. This is probably the most complete team we've faced all year top to bottom," Westminster coach Erik Schwartz said. "Unfortunately they hopped on us early and we couldn't really recover from that. Hats off to them."
And it was literally hats off to Sommers. She finished with a hat trick, as she scored Willows' first and last goal of the game. Alex Fischer and Marilyn Prince added goals and Mandy Mongoven (2 assists) and Viv Kelly (1 assists) aided the attack. Besides the scoring onslaught, there was no room for error for Westminster, which got its only shot off in the 53rd minute. Willows was determined to outwork the Warriors for a full 80 minutes and limit any opportunity.
"After that first goal I realized they were going to take advantage of every single mistake we made and that's exactly what they did," Warriors' midfielder Mattea Huerta said. "They're a really good team; they're aggressive. They should be respected. They're very good."
Westminster goalie Savannah Dutcher had the uncanny ability of corralling 17 saves as the Eagles peppered her with 32 shots, including 23 on goal. Not to mention that the Eagle defense was gnat-like and their pressure wouldn't allow Westminster to connect on passes. The relentless assault wasn't from any specific game plan. Willows had not scouted the Warriors but Eagles' coach Amy McMahon wanted her group to be focused.
"My theory is once you get into these games it's a new season," she said. "It's got to be the team that comes out hard ready to go. And I felt like we did today."
Willows' goals came off well-developed chances and dominant possession. The Eagles could have scored on six different occasions in the first 20 minutes but ultimately didn't execute. Finally in the 23rd minute, Kelly found Fischer for a tapper and a 2-goal lead. Sommers cashed in on two of Mongoven's feeds within the box while Prince's shot came off a rebound on a stop by Dutcher.
"I feel like we had a number of other opportunities we could have finished but we got five so I don't want to be too greedy," McMahon said.
The venue for Friday's matchup between Willows and St. Edward is still up in the air according to Westminster Athletic Director Rick Palmer, but the game in itself will be a treat. A matchup saved usually for sectionals comes early and the last time these two foes met St. Edward fought tooth and nail in the extreme heat for 2-1 sectional championship win at Westminster.
"It's a good rivalry, it goes all the way back to 2010 so it's fun," McMahon said. "And really this is what the IHSA tournament is all about. We're supposed to be building from one game and get better the next game and so on and so forth."
Huntley 2, Marian Central 1: Taryn Jakubowski scored both goals for the Red Raiders (15-3) in this nonconference win. Abbey Brown was in goal for Huntley.
Streamwood 7, IMSA 0: Tawny Carroll scored 4 goals and had an assist to lead the Sabres (11-10) to an easy nonconference win. Kaila Ford and Alondra Blanco added goals and Nathalie Guindon had 1 save in goal for Streamwood.
John Radtke contributed to this report