Cary-Grove shuts down Jacobs

Sure, Cary-Grove would have liked to have scored a few more goals.

But in the end the only statistic that counts is the Trojans’ 2-0 Fox Valley Conference Valley Division win over Jacobs in Cary Thursday afternoon.

Cary-Grove (1-1, 1-0) garnered 17 shots on goal compared to only 4 shots on goal for Jacobs (1-1, 0-1).

“We did a great job of possessing the ball and we did a great job of creating shots,” said Cary-Grove coach Ray Krystal. “We put offensive pressure on them the whole game. It was a great effort and we did a good job of bouncing back from Monday’s loss (to Hersey). We are very happy with the results. It was a good way to start the conference with a win against a good Jacobs team. We made good progress today.”

The Trojans struck first when Korey Kronforst scored on a perfect feed from Mary Schneider with 25:08 left in the first half.

“We have had very intense practices since the loss Monday,” said Kronforst. “We worked on executing and getting more scoring opportunities. We wanted to make their goalie work and we got a lot of scoring chances. This was a good win against a good Jacobs team.”

Cary-Grove finally put the exclamation point on the win with 24 seconds left in the match.

Off a perfectly executed corner kick by Beth Hughes, Jay Jae Usab blasted a shot past Megan Minogue, who had 10 saves in the game.

The Golden Eagles’ junior goalie kept the visitors in the game with 3 saves on breakaway shots by the Trojans. Minogue pushed away 2 point-blank shots by Kronforst and 1 by Allie Simon.

“Megan Minogue was outstanding in goal and definitely kept us in the game,” said Jacobs coach AJ Cappello. “She made some remarkable saves on the breakaway shots.”

The Golden Eagles were only able to manufacture two good chances on Cary-Grove sophomore goalie Krystal Felderman.

With 36:38 left in the game, Jacobs’ Jess Tennant split the Cary-Grove defense but her 5-yard uncontested shot went wide.

With 10:44 left, Lauren Grady’s direct kick hit the crossbar keeping the Golden Eagles scoreless.

“We didn’t do a good job of creating scoring chances,” said Cappello. “That comes down to relying on ourselves. We didn’t do a good job in that area.”