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South Elgin makes the cut against York

South Elgin's Nicole Peeters didn't listen to her teammates.

She was happy that she didn't.

Peeters scored with 28:16 left in the second left to lift the Storm to a 1-0 nonconference victory over the Dukes on Wednesday night in Elmhurst.

"At first they kicked it down and I was running super fast and was dribbling and my teammates told me not to cut," she said. "But I cut inside anyway and then I looked up and saw the top corner on the right and kicked it and it went right there."

South Elgin (3-7-1) needed the boost as it has struggled this spring to string together victories.

"What more can I say. My whole team told me to just shoot the ball and I did and we won," Peters said. "It felt really good. I thought we had a nice rhythm and hopefully this gives us some momentum to keep going."

The defensive effort of the Storm was particularly strong as it limited the Dukes' scoring chances all evening, despite playing without one of its leading defenders, Ari Walters.

"She's out recovering and preparing for our weekend so we had a team that stepped up," South Elgin coach Laura Szwaja said. "We had some great goalkeeping too and just an all-around team effort. I felt like they wanted to win and they did."

York (7-6-0) was trying to bounce back from Tuesday's news that its top scorer, Jenna Lundgren, is lost for the season with a knee injury that she sustained against Lyons. The Dukes battled despite her absence but came up short.

"It doesn't help that we're getting ready for sectional seeding next week so this one hurts a bit," Dukes coach Don Vana said. "It's kind of a bummer as far as that goes. We created some good opportunities but couldn't put anything away. Losing Jenna hurts. She's our leading goal scorer and the engine that drives the team, but we had some people step up to meet the challenge and they created some opportunities."

It was South Elgin that created more of them though, even though the Storm fell short of increasing its lead despite peppering the York defense with a handful of shots throughout the second half.

"We haven't created this many shots in awhile so that was good to see, " Peeters said. "I thought we did a nice job of passing the ball and moving the ball downfield."

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