Boylan eliminates Round Lake

With inspiration stemming from all-state striker Victor Zamora and teammate and captain Nick King, Rockford Boylan rolled to a 5-0 victory over Round Lake on Saturday to capture the sectional title at Barrington and advance into Tuesday's Class 3A supersectional in Barrington against Leyden at 7 p.m.

The Titans (22-1-3), who'd squeezed by Larkin on Thursday night in a shootout, ended the most successful season ever in program history for the Panthers (16-4-5) .

Round Lake was coached by former standout Hugo Tellez, who in his first season guided his club to a third straight NSC Prairie Division title as well as its first appearance in a sectional final.

“I don't know if I could ever top my first season coaching after this one,” said an upbeat Tellez, who showed terrific sportsmanship throughout the tournament.

The Panthers featured nine seniors and a promising group of talented returning players.

“Was Boylan 5 goals better than us? No,” said Round Lake tri-captain Jose Garcia. “But today we came out flat, almost like we were asleep, which is so disappointing because we didn't do that in any of our other games in the playoffs.”

The Titans threatened from the opening whistle and immediately put extra pressure on the Panthers. Homero Jordan cracked his shot from 16 yards off the underside of the bar and over the line just three minutes into the match.

With the wind at their back, the reigning NIC-10 champs were pushing their opponents back. With Zamora and his mates driving the Titans forward with every touch, the junior doubled the lead when he ran onto a Ryan Howe corner and redirected past Panthers keeper Luis Leon.

“It's really a big deal to be the first team to score in a match of this importance, and (then) to go up 2 goals in the first 10 minutes puts so much pressure on a team that it's tough to recover after that,” said Zamora, who along with Held are the lone holdovers from Boylan's 2008 3A state tournament team which finished third that season under then first-year coach Chris Mera.

“We thought we saw some things from the other night when Round Lake played which would allow us to exploit a weakness or two, and since we like to attack, and especially up the outside, we were able to do so, which led to those two quick goals,” said Mera.

The Panthers never rolled over after falling behind, and with the help of a terrific group of supporting fans, they set forth in their search to at least cut the Titans' lead in half by the time intermission came around.

“Watching (Boylan) play all the way into shootout the other night was probably not the best thing for this team, because I believe we came into today's match a little too overconfident,” said Telez. “And by the time we realized this wasn't the same team that we saw on Thursday, we were already down 2-0, and in a little bit of trouble.”

With the Panthers missing one of their top goal-scorers in sophomore Edgar Rodriguez, who rolled his ankle during pregame warmups, Round Lake's attack struggled to get going. One exception was a a nice build-up at 17 minutes, which ended when Zamora parried away a dangerous ball sent through from Mauricio Salgado after he'd teammed with Armando Alvarez and Garcia to get near the Titans' box.

“We really felt that we could play with (them) today, but we just didn't do much of anything the way that we have all season, and when they scored that goal right before the half, it really seemed too much for us to overcome after that,” said Garcia.

The Panthers conceded an own goal at 39 minutes. Then Titans assist leader Kind all but ensured the victory when he made it 4-0 at 54 minutes.

Two minutes later, Tyler Robinson finished off the scoring, and a host of fresh players were brought on by both coaching staffs.

“This is such a great group of players to be around, and as you saw today, they didn't give up, and played with a lot of pride when it would have been easy to just hang (their) heads when they got behind early on,” said Tellez. “I am very fortunate, and so are the players, to have such a strong group of parents, friends and family always there to offer their support by cheering and giving the boys positive words of encouragement during each and every game. I can tell you that we all appreciated it very much this season.”