Streamwood, Batavia battle to a draw

A 5-foot-11, 167-pound athlete may not be very big, but Streamwood senior Luis Segura is still one of the biggest Sabres.

He came up with his team's biggest offensive play of the night during the second half of Tuesday's Upstate Eight Conference River Division boys soccer game at Batavia, but the Sabres couldn't maintain the lead and settled for a 1-1 tie.

Segura scored with 26:11 left in the game on a header.

"With us winning 1-0 like that, I thought it was going to stay like that," he said. "I thought we'd look for that second goal but we kind of backed off. We got disorganized on defense and they took advantage and scored a goal on us."

Streamwood (6-6-3, 0-1-3) had plenty of scoring chances, including several free kicks from proximity, as well as corner kicks, but missed out on those chances save for Segura's goal.

"That's kind of been our thing the last couple of weeks," Sabres coach Matt Polovin said. "We're getting a lot of chances and then getting a lead and losing it. Tonight it was a tie, but we feel like it could've been 4-1 or 5-1 with the chances and the amount of pressure we had, and peppering the goal, so I think the guys came off the field feeling it was more like a loss."

Polovin knows several of Batavia's players well, having coached them for the Fox Valley Strikers club. He certainly knows Batavia senior Luke Laurich and told his team to try to limit his chances. The Sabres did for the most part, but all it takes is one breakdown for a great player to pounce on a scoring opportunity.

Laurich netted the equalizer with 12:59 remaining.

"I told them that he's their go-to guy," Polovin said. "I said he'll probably score if you give him too much room. He got a shot and rebounded it and gave it another rip and suddenly we're tied."

Batavia (6-4-4, 1-1-2) extended its unbeaten streak to four games, but has only earned victories in two of them.

"I thought we did a nice job of connecting out of our back end and then stringing three, four and even five passes together," Bulldogs coach Mark Gianfrancesco said. "We'd get up a bit but didn't create as many opportunities as we would've liked but I thought we were also in a good defensive position and made it difficult for them to break us down."

Nathan Carey and Edwin Rueda both came close to scoring the game-winner for Batavia and Streamwood respectively in the final seven minutes, but each saw their shot attempts rise too high.