Girls soccer: Waubonsie Valley drops Batavia
If someone had to break the Batavia girls soccer team's season-opening win streak, it couldn't have chosen a much more worthy opponent.
Dropping the visiting Bulldogs to 8-1, perennial power Waubonsie Valley won the nonconference contest 3-2 on Sarah Griffith's goal with 15 minutes, 37 seconds left in the second half in Aurora. It was the Warriors' sixth straight win.
Waubonsie's goals - by Purdue-bound junior Griffith, Illinois State recruit Paige Filipek and freshman Carolena Lund - were one more than Batavia had allowed before Saturday.
"It feels great," said Griffith, who deposited her seventh goal, from a Natalie Massa assist, to the left of Batavia goalkeeper Jenny Scara.
"You know," Griffith said, "we come into every game as hard as we can and just think that they're the hardest team we're going to play all year. We just worked our butts off and just tried finishing as much as we could."
Finishing proved tough for Batavia. After Waubonsie (6-1) took the lead the Bulldogs gained three free kicks and two of their 8 corner kicks. One close call got cleared by Waubonsie outside back Rachel White; Mackenzie Foster's header off the big left leg of Gracey DiBiase got stuffed just outside the post by Warriors goalkeeper Sarah Young.
"I think we created some quality chances, and unfortunately a couple of those didn't go in when we needed them to, but that's going to happen. How do you adapt and build from there?" asked Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco.
Waubonsie defenders White, Sakura Milbrook and Kennedy Metzger clamped tighter in the second half after Batavia directed 11 of its 18 overall shots either on or at the net. Young needed to make 8 saves.
"We realized that some of their players were really fast, so we kind of had to stay compact and drop back a little more because their goalie also had a really far punt. We kind of fixed that at halftime," Metzger said.
Off the bus running, Batavia scored 1:48 into the game on a quick-developing play, a long Alyssa Knutson pass up to Keegan Maris. The Valparaiso-bound junior created space to score her 10th goal of the season.
Seven minutes later Waubonsie countered on a neat passing play by Metzger to Jordan Masiak, who crossed the ball to an open Filipek for the 1-1 tie.
Waubonsie led 2-1 at 24:34 of the first half on another nifty set - Smith passing to the left corner to Sam Stricker, who saw Filipek in the middle. The senior alertly let the ball roll past to the unmarked Lund for the conversion.
Not intimidated, Batavia evened the score 2-2 entering halftime when Anna Lins converted another through ball at 19:38.
"It's disappointing," Maris said after it was all over. "We thought we could make the comeback and at least tie it. But I think it's going to make us play harder and practice harder because now we know we can go toe to toe with a team like Waubonsie and play really well against them."