Frustrated Wildcats take fourth place

If this were any ordinary weekend, it would be a weekend to forget for Neuqua Valley.

But seeing as how Neuqua Valley was playing in the Class 3A Final Four and gets to take home a nice fourth-place trophy and individual medals, it's likely to be a weekend the Wildcats remember for some time, Saturday night's 2-0 loss to Rockford Boylan notwithstanding.

"We started off rough this season, and we really started to come around as a team," senior Bryan Ciesiulka said after the third-place game at North Central College in Naperville. "We had a lot of fun. We had a great finish to our year. Not the way we wanted it, but it was a good year."

Saturday's game ended slightly better than Friday's, a 4-0 loss to eventual champion New Trier.

"It was just like this weekend we couldn't find it. We were just a little bit off our game and the other teams made us pay for it," Ciesiulka said.

"We just had a hard time scoring," coach Jim Johns said, whose team was missing injured seniors Mike Kowal, Bryan Dosch and junior Scott Davis. "We tried, but we just couldn't get the ball in the net. We gave it everything we had."

The Wildcats fell behind Saturday in the seventh minute when Rocco Taglia tagged a free kick from 32 yards out for a 1-0 Boylan lead.

Taglia had the assist on Boylan's second goal, a 54th-minute header by Travis Haug.

"This game I always thought we were going to come back," Ciesiulka said. "I don't know. It hurts because you think we're going to come out, we're going to get the first one, we're going to get them on their heels. But we just couldn't do it."