Naperville North, St. Francis finish game even
Two of the stars playing in Monday's girls soccer match at St. Francis will join forces in college, but for now they enjoy going up against one another.
Naperville North junior goalkeeper Elizabeth Cablk and Spartans forward Kendra Pasquale each have committed to play for the University of Illinois once they're done excelling at the prep level. On Monday in Wheaton, however, they did their best to help their respective teams win, before the North Shore Tournament matchup eventually ended in a 0-0 draw.
The top-ranked Huskies, who entered the game off a tourney win over defending Class 3A champion New Trier, outshot the host Spartans 6-2 in the first half. Even so, Pasquale may have had the best shot of the first half and only a diving stop by Cablk kept St. Francis off the scoreboard.
"It's always cool to play against her because we're on the same club team and we're committed to play at the same college," said Cablk, who left her feet to make the leaping stop on Pasquale 14 minutes into the first half. "So it's going to be awesome to play with a player like her, especially as she gets better."
But on this night Cablk and her teammates felt a little empty after their perfect 6-0 start to the year was blemished with the tie.
"It's frustrating tonight that we couldn't capitalize. Our forwards and midfielders were doing such a great job putting pressure on their back line and getting balls in," Cablk said. "We'd made a lot of really great combinations, we just couldn't finish them tonight."
The Spartans, who placed fourth in Class 2A last spring, dropped a tough 2-1 tourney game Saturday against Stevenson. That was followed by Monday's test with Naperville North. St. Francis will face New Trier on Thursday in the tournament.
Pasquale was thrilled to see her team fight the Huskies to a draw and expects the tough schedule to pay dividends down the road this spring.
"They're one of the top teams in the state, probably the nation," the Spartans junior said of the visiting Huskies. "All in all we've been working really hard and I think with the competition this year it's really testing us to see how we are as a team and it's really going to prepare us for state. Coming out with a draw like this where I think we evenly matched them, it's going to make us better playing teams like them."
Spartans goalkeeper Tammy Syron made 9 saves to earn the shutout, including a dazzling second-half stop off a 35-yard free kick by Morgan Krause that was deflected off the crossbar. Krause also came close to reaching the back of the net in the first half with another 35-yard rocket, but that effort sailed just over the crossbar.
"As a whole, we just didn't put chances away," said Huskies coach Steve Goletz. "When you've got chances to score you have to put them away and we didn't today. That's the difference between winning a close game against a good team and walking out 0-0. But defensively we did a good enough job to earn a shutout, even against great players."
Spartans coach Jim Winslow was happy with the effort turned in by his 3-1-2 team.
"This is the first game we played 80 minutes," he said. "We had some really nice sequences. They're very good. They're composed, athletic. They got pace. But we didn't give them anything easy the entire game."