Buffalo Grove tops Batavia for Lake Park title
Buffalo Grove bounced back from a disappointing loss in its Mid-Suburban League opener on Wednesday to defeat Batavia 2-1 Thursday afternoon and capture the tournament championship at the ninth annual Early Bird Invite at Lake Park’s east campus in Roselle.
The Bison went 3-0 in this round-round event, strolling past the host Lancers 4-0 and blanking Glenbard South 7-0 set up Thursday match with the Bulldogs (2-2-1), who’d also won their first two tourney games.
“I’ll admit it wasn’t very pretty out there today, but I think playing our third game in as many days had something to do with that,” said BG coach Pat Dudle, whose roster includes a half-dozen freshmen and three sophomores. “But it feels good to come out of here with a win on a day when we didn’t play our best, which is something that hasn’t happened to us during the past couple of seasons.”
“This team is so young, but with that comes a lot of energy and, with this group of freshmen, plenty of talent, which should make for a good season for all of us,” said junior Carolynn Wieland, who struck for 6 goals in the tourney, including 3 against Lake Park and the game-winner against Batavia at 53 minutes.
The Bison (4-2-0) had an unconvincing start against the Bulldogs as they struggled play through their midfield, which led to Batavia spending most of the first 10 minutes in BG’s end. The Bulldogs took the lead when Tara Rush provided a looping corner to Bre Choffin, who went unmarked into the box and headed past keeper Katie Okamoto.
“We’re not blessed with any big-time scorers or blazing speed, so for this team to be able to compete and be successful, we have to play simple, outwork the other team, and play 1 to 2 touches in order to do so,” said Batavia coach Jim McAlpin.
Batavia followed the blueprint until just after their goal at 12 minutes, with Choffin providing terrific pace and distribution out of the middle and Hannah Schweigert and Grace Andrews doing the same up top. Schweigert and Andrews both scored in Batavia’s 2-0 victory over Lake Park on Tuesday.
The Bison only posed an occasional threat for nearly a half-hour as Batavia clogged the middle of the field, making things easy for keeper Alie Fredendall and defenders Hunter Pryor, Shelby Stone and Megan Reinecke.
BG started to make some noise as Kelly Mahoney headed an attempt from a Carly Brown corner straight on frame and at Fredendall. Moments later, Mahoney sent another header toward Fredendall — again from Brown — and this one found the net to draw the Bison even at 1-1 in the 27th minute.
BG’s opportunities came in part thanks to some creative work by Wieland and the freshman duo of Skylar Groth and Colleen Zickert, who kept the pressure up in the Batavia area.
After the break, Wieland burst up the left side after being sent through with a wonderful ball from another freshman, Allie Ingham. Although Roni Rosek played her position flawlessly on this sequence, the Bulldogs’ second-half keeper was only able to slow Wieland’s blast from in close as BG took the lead for good.
The goal seemed to energize the Bison. Brown, Kelli Zickert and her sister, Colleen, beginning to deliver meaningful balls to their teammates, keeping the pressure on Batavia.
“We never got much going in that second half in our attack, and that’s something that we’ll need to continue to work on,” said McAlpin. “We came to this tournament with 21 players, and today, we got everyone (minutes) and tried a few things here and there with players at certain positions, all with an eye on getting ourselves ready for next week when we open conference play against St. Charles North at home on Tuesday.”