Girls soccer: Naperville North's Krejci came up big

At 5-foot-3 it wasn't uncommon for Naperville North senior Maddie Krejci to be the smallest kid on the soccer field.

She also was usually the best player on that field.

Whenever the Huskies needed a big goal or a player to provide the assist to set up someone else to get one, Krejci delivered time and time again this season.

For leading the Huskies to another DuPage Valley Conference championship and a 21-2-1 season, Krejci is the captain of the 2016 Daily Herald DuPage County All-Area Girls Soccer Team.

As a sophomore, she notched her first 2-goal game to lift the Huskies to a victory against cross-town rival Naperville Central that clinched a share of the DVC title. As a senior, she scored two early goals against those same Redhawks to help the Huskies win the Naperville Invitational for the second straight year. In the postseason, her goal lifted the Huskies to a 1-0 victory against a tough Benet team to win the Class 3A Bolingbrook regional.

In between those three efforts, she scored plenty of other goals and contributed many assists, finishing with 43 goals and 23 assists, which included 13 goals and 7 assists this spring.

"The legacy she's leaving is that whenever we needed a big goal, especially when they were tough to come by, she was the one who found it," Huskies coach Steve Goletz said. "She constantly found a way to score. She's simply a super-talented kid who was always on the attack."

Big shoes to fill

Sometimes it's difficult to figure out, let alone understand, why someone as talented as Krejci can continually victimize an opposing team. Regardless of the amount of attention you give them, they simply find a way to be the difference maker.

"I knew I had big shoes to fill with Abbie (Boswell) graduating," Krejci said. "She taught me foot skills and how to read the game, so I knew this season that I had to take as many chances as I could get."

Boswell scored a school-record 85 goals for the Huskies, and Krejci was involved in plenty of them, while also learning a lot along the way.

"This year I tried to read the defense and how they marked me and then worked off my teammates," Krejci said. "If the defense slacked off of me, I tried to beat them 1v1. If that didn't work I did what I could to get my teammates involved to score a goal."

There probably isn't a local girls soccer coach who has been as blessed as Goletz when it comes to talented offensive players. He's coached plenty of amazing ones, and Krejci is the latest on that impressive list.

"It's hard to put into words, but she's just super dominating with getting the ball, even when people are keying on her," Goletz said. "Coming into this year I was wondering how she'd do with Boswell gone, but she ended up carrying us at times in what was a record-breaking season for the team. I think that speaks volumes for the type of player she is."

It's tough not to love what she could do on the soccer field, but you could argue that her personality is an equal to her ability to play the game. Just ask one of her teammates.

Sophomore Morgan Krause, an outstanding player in her own right, now calls Krejci one of her close friends.

"I love her to death," Krause said. "She's always happy and always has a smile on her face, and she always gets the job done."

Good teams don't necessarily have to get along extremely well, but usually the two complement each other. Krejci was in the center of it all for the Huskies.

"I cannot tell you how much fun this year was and how good a group of girls we had," Krause said. "Everything clicked all season, and Maddie was definitely in the center of all that. She brought us all together. She was serious and wanted to win, but whenever there was pressure she'd crack a joke and give us some relief from the pressure. We're definitely going to miss her next year."

A true competitor

Don't let her pleasant nature completely fool you. You rarely use the word "hate" when talking about a kid like Krejci, but like many competitors that's how she feels about losing.

"I love the game and I love to be with my teammates and coaches," she said. "But as I much as I love all that I still hate losing. That's why I'm always out there trying to win. Being happy sort of comes with it."

She certainly gave the Huskies plenty to smile about this spring. The team may have fallen one game short of qualifying for the state finals - they were upset by Glenbard East in the supersectional - but they still finished a record-breaking season that included titles in conference, a regional and a sectional as well as a school-best 19 shutouts.

"We didn't want it to end that way, but no one else does either," Krejci said. "Sadly it did end like that, but we had a very strong team and I'm very proud of my teammates. We went a long time into the postseason and accomplished a lot of things."

Like fellow Huskies' standout scorers Zoe Swift (Kentucky) and Boswell (Ball State), Krejci is also taking her game to the next level; she'll play at Tennessee.

"Freshman year I asked myself if I wanted to play in college or not and decided I did so I just kept working hard through club and the high school season," she said. "I want to be the best player that I can be. I might not be the biggest player, but I go to a trainer and do what I can do get stronger. I do whatever I can to be the best player for my team."

While she'll soon be playing for the Volunteers, she'll never forget her time as a Huskie, something she was looking forward to well before she stepped into the school four years ago.

"I had three older brothers, so the (Krejci) name was well known since some of them played football," she said. "I wanted to finish in their footsteps and do pretty well."

That's what you call an understatement, from an undersized kid whose effort and contributions were nothing short of amazing.