Young Batavia speaks with its feet against Lake Park

Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco goes out of his way to joke around with the six freshmen on his roster this season. It’s his method of drawing them out, not letting them be too timid among their older teammates.

“The more they talk the better everybody’s going to be,” Gianfrancesco said. “I’ve been pretty impressed so far.”

Gianfrancesco had reason to be impressed Tuesday at Lake Park’s Early Bird Invite. Freshman Paige Renfus spoke volumes with her feet, scoring her first two varsity goals, and classmate Karina Rosales added another in a 5-1 victory over the host Lancers in Roselle.

“They’ve been contributing the whole time, since we started, and that’s good,” Gianfrancesco added about his freshmen. “That’s good for them, because it really solidifies their spot on the team and the older girls are going, ‘All right, they are pretty good. We can play with these girls.’ Sometimes it’s an adversarial relationship by age, and you don’t want it to be that way. So they’ve inserted themselves really nice.”

After tying Wheaton Warrenville South and losing by a goal to Metea Valley, Batavia (2-1-1) has won its first two games in the round-robin tournament and can see improvement. It will play for the tournament championship Thursday when it meets Buffalo Grove.

“We were ready and we wanted to get a good game and a win and move on in the tournament,” Renfus said. “Our communication was better and our passing was good.”

“These are nice games to win, and we’re really putting some pressure on some teams,” Gianfrancesco added. “We’re getting some flow.”

Batavia also got goals from junior Anna Zeyen and senior Jessica Milanese.

“I like the combinations, I like the working off each other,” Gianfrancesco said. “People are really working hard, winning the ball back after losing it, and I think that’s causing other teams some trouble.”

The Bulldogs gave the Lancers trouble right from the start, winning the ball in the midfield and putting pressure on a struggling Lake Park squad.

“We’re going to take one game, one practice at a time and keep working on the fundamentals that we need improve on, as well as tactically,” Lancers coach Chris Fruehling said. “They’re learning, and we need to take those small positives and build on them each game. At the end I thought we did some nice things out there which resulted in us being able to finish one. We’ve just got to take it and add to it.”

Lake Park got the final goal of the day, a 67th-minute curling shot from junior midfielder Rachel Garippo that gave Batavia a reminder it’s not yet a finished product.

“We would’ve liked not to have given up that goal, but that’s a learning curve,” Gianfrancesco said.

“He told us we need to keep strong all the way through the 80 minutes and don’t let up and stop,” Renfus added.