Boys soccer: Naperville North defeats Naperville Central

Naperville North senior Chris Sullivan garners a lot of attention, but you can't forget about his teammates either.

With so much focus on Sullivan during a restart, junior Ethan Harvey was left wide open and had no problem seizing the opportunity, blasting in a goal late in the first half of Saturday night's DuPage Valley Conference boys soccer game at Naperville Central.

Harvey's goal gave the Huskies a 2-0 lead, and that was the last of the scoring. Huskies goalkeeper Tommy Welch earned the shutout.

"Obviously, Sully is locked in when he takes free kicks," Harvey said. "I saw they had four or five guys on the wall and nobody was out wide. I just saw the game well and luckily Sully found me and I was composed on the ball, took a touch and looked up and luckily it went into the back of the net."

Naperville North (6-2-2, 2-0-0) had scored its first goal just 5:35 into the action via a free kick from sophomore Colin Iverson, who talked about practice being key to his success.

"We've been practicing that play all season," Iverson said. "Jack Barry always makes that run and kicks it out and I just hit it."

Naperville Central (5-1-2, 1-1-0) outshot the Huskies 11-7 but only put a pair of shots on frame while surrendering both goals off of dead balls.

"I thought if you take the regular run of play, it was a more even game," Redhawks coach Troy Adams said. "But you put the dead balls into the situation and there's a lot of stuff that goes in there."

Kyle Crawford, Zack Kokes and Rokas Stadalninkas created some chances late for the Redhawks as they looked to slice their deficit in half, but they had no success against Naperville North's back line of Iverson, Harvey, Andrew Klaiber, Mitch Konrad and others who came off the bench.

"We pushed forward; we threw a lot of bodies up the field in the hopes we'd be able to get some chances," Adams said. "But that's another thing. It's so hard when you get down by two goals. You've got to start thinking about how can I shift and as soon as you do, it's hard to adjust."

The Huskies had just beaten the Redhawks 2-1 to win the Best of the West tournament on Sept. 3.

"We know we're going to see them again in the playoffs," Sullivan said. "We've got to get better. We need to practice hard every single day because trying to beat the same team three times is tough and would be a great accomplishment."