Huntley's fit to be tied vs. Z-B in title match

It was the worst of times and the best of times in the story of two halves.

First Zion-Benton scored two goals in the first half while Huntley scored a pair in the second half and that's the way it ended in the 2008 Wauconda Boys Soccer Classic championship game on Saturday.

It was decided that there wouldn't be any overtime periods.

Both teams showed great goal keeping as Huntley's 6-foot sophomore, Kevin Montelongo, grabbed 16 saves including 5 in the last 3 minutes of the second half, and Zion-Benton's Sean Avila recorded 9 saves.

"We really wanted to win and not have a tie," Montelongo said. "In the second half, everybody played well as a team and I just want to give credit to the whole entire team and our coaches for a good job."

Whenever Huntley is either tied or behind a goal in the last couple of seconds of the game, Montelongo will leave the goal box and join his team's offense.

"That was something I do on my own," Montelongo said. "If I see like in this case we are tied in the last couple of seconds because of my height, I will try to get a pass and put it in the goal."

Huntley coach Kris Grabner was happy with the way his team came back.

"We said at halftime we played a lot better than we did on Wednesday night," Grabner said." We wanted to keep building on that and our goal was the win the second half. We got the two goals, they worked hard and they followed on what we wanted them to do defensively and did a good job in the air."

Grabner also praised Montelongo.

"He's is very sound and for being that big, he is very good on the ground and is very good in the air," Grabner said. "Teams will try and go over the top, but there is just no sense in doing that. He just gets back to the post too good."

Ryan Johnson used his head the hard way to score the first goal of the game with just over 2 minutes played in the first half.

"I went up for the goal and it hit my head and I didn't even see it go in," said Johnson, who was shaken up a little bit after the ball went in. "We gave (Huntley) a couple of goals late in the game. They worked hard for them, but our defense broke down."

Simon Rosas slammed a goal from 5 yards out on a cross from Omar Garcia with 37 seconds left to give the Zee-Bees a 2-0 halftime lead.

Huntley made it to the scoreboard as Nicola Carbonara hit a corner kick to Jesus Alejos, who nailed it to the right post with 23:32 left in the second half.

Ten Minutes later, the Red Raiders tied the score at 2-2 as Carbonara scored on a pass from Fedya Larin right in front of the goal.

"The 2-0 lead in soccer is kind of almost the worst score to have because it's not a blowout yet, but it's not a one goal lead so you maybe relax a bit," Zee-Bees coach Cliff Pontillo said. "We talked about it at half to pick up our intensity. We didn't but that's OK. So once they tied the game, (Huntley) had enthusiasm but I thought we controlled the game the last 15 minutes of the game and we had some opportunities to win, but we didn't."

Streamwood 2nd at Lancer Classic: Concluding play at the Lake Park Lancer Classic with a 0-0 tie against Wheaton North, Streamwood (4-0-2) earned second place tournament honors by a goal differential decision. Both Streamwood and Wheaton North finished the tournament 3-0-2, but the Falcons allowed fewer goals to claim championship honors. The Sabres saw five players awarded all-tournament accolades -Alex Aranda, Alex Perez, Matt Rasinski, Mike Chwistek and Roma Patino In the title game, Edgar Leyva maintained the shutout for Streamwood with 8 saves.

"The guys played great," said Sabres coach Matt Polovin. "This is the best season start we've ever had. Everybody played hard for 80 minutes of each match."

Conant 5, Crystal Lake South 2: Despite a pair of unassisted goals from Charlie Oliver, Crystal Lake South (2-4-1) fell to Conant at the Lake Park Lancer Classic. Zach Dalzell defended the net for the Gators recording 7 saves.