Girls soccer: Tip your hat to Rittenhouse, St. Francis
Hannah Rittenhouse wasn't looking to enter the IHSA record book, but she was willing to do whatever it took to bring a championship trophy back to St. Francis.
She got her trophy and also inked her name into the record book by scoring a hat trick. The Spartans beat St. Viator 4-0 in Saturday afternoon's Class 2A championship game at North Central in Naperville.
"I've never done anything like this in a state final game and it's such an awesome feeling," she said. "We came out and fought really hard and we deserved those goals. I think we worked pretty hard and everything was well deserved."
Rittenhouse tied the Class 2A record of 3 goals in a game that was established by Belleville Althoff's Megan Pawlowski in 2010, coincidentally, also against St. Viator.
"Hannah is a handful, a true target player," Spartans coach Jim Winslow said. "She had a great finish on that first one and Kendra (Pasquale) buried the next one, and then Claire (Hensley) with the great ball on the fourth one and that's game over, set, match. That's great to have that composure to just look up and split the defenders and Hannah didn't have to do anything with that last one."
St. Francis (18-4-3) tamed the Lions right away when Rittenhouse scored just 6:22 into the action. Pouncing on a loose ball near the top of the box, Rittenhouse appeared to go down to the ground as she slid her shot just inside the left post.
The Spartans extended their lead to 2-0 just before half when Pasquale buried an attempt off a through ball into the near upper 90 with just 4:37 remaining.
St. Viator (18-6-2) finally appeared like it was going to break through in the final minute of the first half, but Brinley McVeigh's 10-yard shot hit the far post and bounded out of harm's way.
"Every moment matters in a game like this," Pasquale said. "It doesn't matter how much you're up or down because any moment can change, so we play for the moment. We did that today so it was really a good feeling to go out on that note."
Pasquale scored again just short of 10 minutes into the second half and then completed her hat trick with only 11:17 remaining in the game.
"Coach told us at halftime that a 2-0 game is always a tough area so we need to keep scoring," Pasquale said. "So I figured that I need to finish in the second half, so I did."
She made something so difficult look so easy, and with so much attention on her heroics, it was easy to overlook her team's defense effort.
The Spartans held McVeigh scoreless with Jill Ditusa flanking her all afternoon.
"She's a handful and Jill did a very nice job on her today," Winslow said. "I was proud of how she played. Emma (Armbrust) and Jill are kind of like the yin and yang. Jill can do stuff with the ball that a lot of kids would like to do, but Emma is just rock solid because she can clean up a bunch of messes at the end of the game."
The end of the season couldn't have been any better for the Spartans.
"I love this team so much, so this is such a great way to end my career here at St. Francis," Pasquale said. "Every game all the girls have given their all, so it's not surprising to go out this way, but it wasn't as easy as it may have looked."