Metea Valley powers past Stevenson

As the top seed in the Pepsi Showdown, Metea Valley keeps proving it deserves that honor.

The Mustangs put on another display of their strength and speed up top Saturday at Olympic Park in Schaumburg as Kristina Tomares scored twice and Jenna Kentgen once to help Metea Valley past No. 9 seed Stevenson 3-0 in the tournament quarterfinals.

“Our team has gotten better since last year and we’re definitely a power team now,” Kentgen said. “We’ve been working hard in practice and scoring a lot of goals.”

Metea Valley (12-1) advances to meet Loyola Academy (12-0-1) in the semifinals Saturday at Olympic Park. The winner competes in the championship game next Sunday at Toyota Park.

Loyola shut out New Trier (9-1) 2-0 on Saturday.

Metea Valley needed about a half-hour to solve the Stevenson defense..

“We can move the ball,” Metea Valley coach Pat Feulner said. “We’ve scored a lot of goals this year and we’re dangerous up top. We can come at you with 5 or 6 different people and we play a possession game.”

The Mustangs got a pair of goals in a two-minute span.

First, Tomares took a through ball from Alexis McKay and scored in the 28th minute.

“(Stevenson’s) defense was man-marking and on our backs a lot,” said Tomares, who has 16 goals this season. “Once we got the momentum of the game, we knew that we could get past them. It was important to make runs off the ball.”

Next, Kentgen got past the Patriots’ defense after taking a pass from Elena Sidwell in the 30th minute for a 2-0 Mustangs lead.

Tomares got her second goal from a Hannah Thayer assist in the 65th minute.

Mustangs keeper Megan Geldernick made 6 saves — all in the first half — on her way to shutout.

Stevenson (5-3-1) started out reasonably well and created some scoring chances over the first 20 minutes. Even after giving up the goals, the Patriots didn’t give. They’ve been resilient all year, as evidenced by their previous outing, a 5-4 overtime victory against York in which Stevenson came from behind three times.

“I’m not happy, because you can’t give up goals like that,” Stevenson coach Mark Schartner said. “My team wasn’t deflated. We have come back after a goal. I’m just frustrated with the result.

“(Metea Valley’s) counter-attacks are major, and they had two to three players that can hurt you. Their runs without the ball are the best by far that we’ve seen this year, and they exposed us on those runs.”