Batavia blows out Bartlett in regional semifinal

A score line like 6-1 tells the story of a girls soccer blowout - but while there's no denying that Batavia ran out a comfortable winner against Bartlett on Wednesday, the match was, for an hour, much closer than that.

Batavia raced to a 3-0 halftime lead in the Class 3A Hoffman Estates regional semifinal before Bartlett rallied with a goal. A missed Hawks penalty kick with 25 minutes left could have made the score 3-2. As it was, the Bulldogs scored a further 3 goals and advanced to meet top-seeded St. Charles North in Friday's title match.

"We all wanted to play our best for the seniors since this is their last year," Batavia junior Abby Gray said. "We just wanted to come out and play our best."

But if you're thinking the Bulldogs will be satisfied with the manner of the victory, you're going to be mistaken, especially given the 5-0 victory St. Charles North applied to Hoffman Estates in the match preceding the Batavia-Bartlett tilt.

"I felt we played pretty well, but we have to play better," Batavia coach Jim McAlpin said. "I felt we made a lot of poor decisions out there that resulted in turnovers that turned into plays that put us under unnecessary pressure. I think we need to play smarter. We played hard. But we need to do better with our decision-making, or those things are going to come back to haunt us."

Gray scored a hat trick for Batavia (13-5-3.) While the junior has been in solid scoring form the last quarter of the season, Wednesday marked her first three-goal performance of the campaign.

"It took me a little bit to pick it up," Gray said. "But I've been picking it up lately."

Gray scored Batavia's first two goals - the first coming in the 23rd minute of the first half and the second coming 4 minutes later. On both, she was able to take a defense-splitting pass from a teammate and run in on goal before scoring.

"They were running an offside trap and it took us a little bit to get used to that," Gray said. "Once we did, we outran them. We had the speed to do it."

Hillary Cooper made the score 3-0 by halftime when she collected a ball that had deflected off a Bartlett defender. Cooper moved in free of the defense and scored.

Bartlett's best attacking spell came at the start of the second half. Sam Barone scored after 13 minutes of play to narrow the margin, and the penalty kick miss came 2 minutes later.

"That one hurt," Bartlett coach Heather Thomas said. "That would have made it 3-2 instead of the 6-1 that it ended up. Those need to be put away."

Bartlett (15-8), which had won 7-of-8 to close the regular season, was unable to sustain its comeback and surged to complete an emphatic victory.

"There's not much to say about this one," Thomas said. "I'm at a loss for words. We did not and we have not played well against Batavia in four years. I don't know why and I don't know what it is that they have over us. But we just don't play well against them. And we did not play well at all tonight."

Liz Barnes scored Batavia's fourth goal with 19 minutes to play. Tory Kinniard scored on a penalty kick with 5 minutes left and Gray completed her hat trick with 2:34 left.