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Girls soccer: Najera's 4 goals lead St. Charles North past Larkin

For almost an entire half, Larkin played St. Charles North to a 1-1 tie Tuesday in the Upstate Eight Conference River opener for both teams.

But there's a good reason St. Charles North opened the year ranked No. 2 in the Daily Herald Top 20, and the North Stars showed why with a flurry of goals that turned a close game into a rout.

Claudia Najera and Hailey Rydberg scored in the final six minutes of the first half for a 3-1 halftime lead, then the North Stars broke the game open with 4 goals in a 90-second stretch early in the second half on the way to an 8-1 victory.

Najera finished with 4 goals for St. Charles North, who improved to 3-0-1 overall with a tie against No. 7 Neuqua Valley.

"I thought we played a really good second half," Najera said. "First half we came out slow. It definitely changed after our talk at halftime. We connected more. First half we went more individually. Second half we came together as a team."

After Najera opened the scoring just five minutes into the game, Larkin's Ariana King tied the score 10 minutes later on a free kick.

Larkin's freshman keeper Lluviana Carmona, who was called up for the game because the Royals' regular keeper plus two starters were gone on spring break, made a series of saves from point-blank range to keep the score tied. Unfortunately for the Royals, she had to leave at halftime.

"She played excellent," Larkin coach Ken Hall said.

The North Stars pressured the Royals from the get-go in the second half, with Alison Wessel hitting the cross bar just one of the shots that barely missed. Moments later, Gia Wahlberg scored on an assist from Jordan Karom for a 4-1 lead.

Less than two minutes later, the North Stars had scored three more times by Najera, Gia Wahlberg and Najera again.

"It's fun and exciting to watch when they play up to their potential," North Stars coach Brian Harks said.

Ashley Hayes added the final goal in the 60th minute.

"I thought there was a definitely a change to our approach to the game the second half to the first half," Harks said. "The first half we started letting a couple things get to us, The field conditions, I thought our pace of play was a little slow, our movement off the ball was not what we expected it to be. I was very pleased with our second half."

Marisol Villagomez and Osiris Leon were two of the players Hall said stepped up for Larkin (0-2, 0-1), who found plenty of positives in its first half performance.

"I thought we came out and played pretty well," Hall said. "Some of the girls really stepped up today. We put in a good effort. If we can play the rest of the season like we did that first half, we are going to win a lot of games."

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