Boys soccer: Naperville Central gets winner at Lake Park in final minutes

For more than 79 minutes Tuesday night, in miserable weather, Naperville Central continually knocked at the scoring door against Lake Park.

It took a freak play and a Lake Park goalkeeper replacement to allow the Redhawks to finally break through and emerge with a 1-0 victory.

In the 77th minute Lancers' junior goalkeeper Christian Lekki went down hard in a scrum in the middle of the 18-yard box and had to leave the game.

In came his backup, senior defender Daniel Nocek, and Naperville Central gave him almost no time to get acclimated to the game. With 56 seconds left junior Ivan Dosen blasted a shot from about 30 yards out that Nocek made a valiant effort to block - but the ball rebounded right to senior Nate Zain, who buried the ball into the center of the net.

"We had one earlier, I believe with Nate hitting it, and I told him the same thing I told Ivan, hit it so it skips," said Naperville Central coach Troy Adams, whose team took a step closer to a DuPage Valley Conference title, improving to 12-4-3 overall and 6-1-1 in league. "The first time we got it a little too high, and that time I think we got it just right.

"It's an impossible ball for the goalie to read. It's brutal, because you don't know - is it going to stay flat? Is it going to come up?"

Zain was just happy to be in the right place at the right time.

"Ivan played a perfect ball right where coach wanted him, into the top of the six, and hopefully it skips and either it goes into the net or the goalie will have a deflection because there's no way he can cleanly save that," Zain said.

Naperville Central expended a lot of energy, particularly in the first half, to set up multiple scoring opportunities for senior forward Ryan Coleman. In the 10th minute Coleman drove down the left side and beat defenders right above the 18-yard box and fired a shot that went wide right.

In the 48th Coleman again was in the left corner and this time placed a cross in front of the net that skirted past sophomore Rohan Bhargava.

Despite the loss Lake Park got a stellar game in the net from Lekki, who finished with 5 saves, and its back line, headed up by Nocek, juniors Tom Zakic and Max Ellenbecker, and senior Sebastian Augustyn.

"We actually spent a lot of training last weekend and yesterday specifically on that," said Lake Park coach Sean Crosby, whose team fell to 9-7-3 and 3-4 in league. "We had a few hiccups and bumps maintaining possession and balancing in the back. (Tonight) we plugged in."

And the Lancers had plenty of scoring opportunities of their own, the best of which was in the 51st minute, when senior midfielder Sebastian Glodz got loose with the ball in a crowd in front of the Redhawks' net. But he couldn't convert and the ball was cleared.