Boys soccer: Dundee-Crown upsets Streamwood in regional semifinal

The theme Tuesday night at the Class 3A Streamwood boys soccer regional couldn't be better illustrated by quick, early goals. And Dundee-Crown appeared to be the trend setter.

The No. 7 Chargers (12-8) scored 2 goals by Julian Ajroja and Eric Martinez in the first 10 minutes to help grab a 4-3 upset win over the No. 1 seed Sabres at Millennium Field to advance to Saturday's regional final against No. 4 Larkin at 3 p.m.

But the way the second half composed itself, it was a good thing the Chargers got off to the fast start.

Both teams traded goal-for-goal twice in the second half in a 15-minute span as every goal Streamwood put forth the Chargers had something to answer.

"You don't really envision that and you don't want that to happen," Chargers coach Rey Vargas said of the back-and-forth. "But we knew we had it in us (to win) and it was a matter of executing everything we worked on and I thought we did a pretty good job of doing that at least offensively."

The Sabres (11-6-4) tied things up at 2-2 on Alex Chavez's goal in the 42nd minute but Ajroja, who finished with 2 goals and 2 assists, answered in the 51st minute on a set play served up by Jareckyj to left of the net. Ajroja's shot from the left side near the box went sailing in past the near post for a 3-2 lead.

And when Gregorio Esteves drilled in a header in the box from Rafa Gil for Streamwood in the 56th minute to make it 3-3, just 1:13 later Mario Solano scored a goal off a cross by Ajroja to give D-C the lead for good.

"Streamwood is always a tough team and very quick. I wish we could've held them back or at least put another one on," Jareckyj said. "We had a couple chances where we hit the post and could've just ended it."

D-C put on 10 second half shots with 9 coming on net versus Streamwood's 9 with 7 coming on goal. Streamwood goalkeeper Daniel Dominguez saw 2 D-C shots go off the post with 7 minutes left and stopped a third shot on another subsequent attempt. Just 11 minutes earlier, the Sabres could've tied it at 4 but Oscar Chavez hit the post from 25 yards out on one shot and then got a second chance 10 seconds later that went wide right.

"We thought we had the momentum but then they came back," Streamwood coach Matt Polovin said. "In this atmosphere in this kind of game, to give up two goals that early - not that they were defeated but they felt that it was tough. They didn't stop trying, they still played hard and gave everything they could but that just took it out of us a little bit giving up those early goals.