Meadows blanks Dundee-Crown
Dundee-Crown’s defense is extremely stingy.
Rolling Meadows found out how stingy as it was not able to get a goal on the board during the first half of Monday’s opening round matchup of the South Elgin Spring Break soccer tournament.
The Mustangs finally broke through on Maggie Moran’s breakaway goal in the second half and took a 1-0 victory.
“We just couldn’t finish,” Mustangs’ coach Jeff Adkins said. “The way (Moran) scored is the way she usually scores. She’s fast with the ball.”
Moran drove past the Chargers’ defense with her speed setting up a one-on-one matchup with D-C (0-3) goalkeeper Ali Sanders. Moran made a fake like she was going up top and then sent the ball across the ground to the left side of the goal.
After dropping its first game of the season 1-0 to Mundelein, the Mustangs (1-1) got their first goal of the season with 19:20 left in the game.
“It was nice to get back up top and score,” said Moran, who had been playing with the defense as of late.
Moran nearly set up a scoring play earlier in the game when she again used her speed to help out the offense. The junior used her speed and burned up the field, but this time she drew out Sanders (11 saves). Moran then dished the ball out to Alex Partipilo for what should have been and empty net goal.
But the Chargers then proved why they are such a strong defensive team. Mallory Fryer jumped into the goal box and provided adequate backup and prevented Partipilo from scoring.
“We have a strong defense,” Fryer said. “They got shots, but we tried our best to keep them from scoring.”
Rolling Meadows finished with 7 shots in the first half, but went into halftime tied at 0.
Dundee-Crown did not get a shot on goal in the game, with breakdowns in the offense on the Rolling Meadows side of the field.
The Chargers struggled to get clean looks at the goal mainly from passing breakdowns.
“On defense, we’ve been strong,” Chargers’ coach Sebastian Falinski said. “What’s been killing us is our inability to complete passes in the final third of the field.”