Girls soccer: Crystal Lake South eases past South Elgin
During an 11-game win streak to end the regular season the Crystal Lake South girls soccer team absolutely dominated by outscoring its opponents 57-3. However, on Tuesday the Gators found themselves in an unfamiliar position as they fought for their playoff survival in the Class 3A Streamwood regional semifinals against South Elgin.
With a gusty wind playing a major factor CLS (18-1-1) scored 2 first half goals by Jenna Ross and then hung on for a 3-1 win to advance to Friday's title game against Elgin, a 3-2 winner over Dundee-Crown in Tuesday's second semifinal.
"It was a little scary," Ross said. "We were super nervous with it that close, but we knew it was do or die so we had to pull through."
Ross scored her first goal 5:30 into the game on a free kick with the strong wind at her back from 40 yards out.
"I saw their goalkeeper trying to position her players in front of her so I tried to catch her off guard," Ross said. "I knew with the wind I could get it all the way to the net so I just let it go and it carried just over her."
Ross' second goal came on a throw-in from 25 yards with 8:02 left in the first half.
"I've done that once before on a throw-in," Ross said. "I don't know if that was the exact plan. I just knew with the wind behind me I was going to throw it as far as I could and see what happens and it wound up in the net."
The Gators had other opportunities, hitting the crossbar twice on shots in the first half, but had to settle with a 2-0 halftime lead.
South Elgin had the wind advantage in the second half and made it very interesting.
Arielle Walters scored for the Storm off a corner kick from Bridget Bondi with 30:19 left to play to cut the CLS lead to 2-1.
South Elgin kept up the pressure with an 8-2 shot advantage in the second half. However, the Storm couldn't come up with the second goal to tie it and eventually with 2:47 left to play the Gators got an insurance goal from Courtney Sengstock to put the game away.
"Give credit to South Elgin. They really made us work," CLS coach Jay Mueller said. "They seemed to take a lot better advantage of the conditions than we did. We had a tendency to just send the ball down with a lot of long balls over the top and didn't possess it as well as I would have liked. They kept us under a lot of pressure in that second half, but we didn't break. Our defense hung in there."
Gators goalkeeper Annika Sevcik had 5 saves.
South Elgin finished the season 6-14-2.
"It was valiant effort against a very good team," South Elgin coach Laura Szwaja said. "We made them earn it. With it 2-1 we put them in an uncomfortable spot. We knew they were dangerous off deadballs and that hurt us. But I have nine seniors I commend for each adding their own flare to the program."