Boys soccer: Second-half surge power Wheeling past Streamwood
Last fall's Mid-Suburban East boys soccer champion, Wheeling, registered its first victory of the season, using a 3-goal second half to outscore host Streamwood 3-2 on Thursday afternoon on the turf at Millennium Field.
The Wildcats scored on consecutive set-piece opportunities, with Elias Cisneros equalizing at 45 minutes before teammate Nick Janulis gave his club a 1-goal advantage five minutes later. Cisneros' second goal, in the 54th minute, was the game-winner.
"It was nice to come back to play our best 40 minutes of soccer after a less than quality first half, and an OK first game the other day against New Trier," said pleased Wildcats coach Ed Uhrik, who watched his team draw 0-0 with the Trevians in their season opener earlier in the week.
The Wildcats followed a sharp 10 minutes on Thursday with some less inspired play, which allowed the Sabres (1-1-0) to dominate most of the first period. Donnie Sosa's PK conversion at 34 minutes gave coach Matt Polovin's team a 1-0 advantage at intermission.
"We did some very good things after a slow start, and (I thought) we showed we are very capable of creating chances, while putting our opponent under pressure," said Polovin, who guided the Sabres to a fourth-place finish last fall at the Class 3A state tournament. "But when you have a lot of inexperience, you're going to take a few steps back along the way, and our concern going into this season is how we're going to defend on dead-balls. The way we did today was a recipe for disaster."
Sosa, who was a key figure in the Sabres' attack all last season, found the bar with his header after a well-place free kick from Edwin Rueda at 24 minutes. He then fired wide moments later after teammate Rafa Gill did some terrific work in order to set Sosa free.
Cisneros ran freely onto a wonderful serve from Aguirre just after the break - as did Janulis, who finished yet another free-kick helper from Aguirre.
"After those two goals, our energy and speed of play went way up, and you began to see what we could in our attack when our midfield is playing the way it did on both sides of the ball and with them finding our guys up top," said Uhrik.
The play of Josh Prindle, Jonathan Sanchez, Cisneros and the backline duo of sophomores David Soto and Vicente Castro proved to be the difference in Wheeling's strong 40-minute performance.
"It was truly a tale of two halves today, but we might have a couple of those while the guys continue to figure things out and we get settled in with our formation, and where we'll eventually play guys," Polovin said. "So I am not upset, because we started slow last year, and looked how we finished."
The Sabres jump right back into the fire when they begin pool play Monday at the NorthShore Challenge hosted by state power New Trier, who will be Streamwood's first tourney foe.
Freshman Alex Chavez finished the scoring with a goal in the 80th minute.
Wheeling enters the annual Glenbrook South Titan Invite next week as the reigning champion and will play Schurz Tuesday afternoon in Glenview.