WW South strikes early, often
Wheaton Warrenville South had been struggling a little to score. Not Saturday.
The Tigers enjoyed a wild first half, then found the only goal of the second half for a 4-3 nonconference girls soccer victory at local rival Wheaton Academy.
“In a lot of the games, we’re pretty much equal on shots on goal, we just haven’t finished them,” Tigers junior Dana Miller said. “Even in games we lost we get a lot of shots, we just don’t finish. But I think today it worked out a little better.”
Wheaton Academy set the tone for the game, scoring in just the fourth minute of play. A WW South foul set up a Wheaton Academy free kick just outside the penalty area, and Warriors senior Crystal Thomas rushed to take the kick before the Tigers could set up defensively, scoring easily.
“You could tell, she was looking at that all the way, you could tell,” Wheaton Academy coach Dave Underwood said. “I think she had made up her mind when she started making her run toward the ball that she was shooting it.”
The momentum shifted quickly and drastically, with the Tigers (9-6-3) scoring the next three goals, tying the game in the sixth minute when Miller, playing forward, passed to senior Lexi Peterson, who made one touch on the ball and shot into an open net.
Peterson scored again in the 16th minute, a left-footed volley off a Kate Fowee corner kick flicked on by Miller, who then made the score 3-1 with her 14-yard blast in the 20th minute.
“We were playing pretty even. It was very back and forth,” Miller said. “We’re not even used to scoring that much. We don’t really score 6 or 7 goals a game. It was an eventful half.”
Wheaton Academy (11-8-1) made sure of that, cutting into the Tigers’ lead in the 25th minute when Thomas sent a through-ball ahead for Ally Witt to chase, Witt just beating a pair of defenders and the goalkeeper to the ball and poking it into the goal.
The Warriors tied the game in the 38th minute, Thomas, a Notre Dame recruit, picking up the ball near midfield, dribbled in on goal, beat a pair of defenders and converted.
“She was really good. She’s a very talented player,” Miller said. “She can run past half our team. I think we struggled with that a lot more in the first half and beginning of the second, but I think we finally figured it out at the end. We just need to stay on her and not let her run.”
“They fought hard,” Tigers coach Guy Callipari said of the Warriors. “They were down 3-1 and (Thomas) took the team on her shoulders and said I got this. If we played tight she got around and if we played loose she just shot. We had to figure that out.”
The comeback encouraged Underwood on a day when his Warriors weren’t at their best.
“I was very pleased about that,” Underwood said. “That was a thing that we did talk about at the intermission was their fight to come back at 3-1. For a few minutes there after they scored that third one I thought, ooh, boy, we might be in trouble here if we don’t pull something together here quick. And they did.”
The Tigers got the game-winner in the 51st minute, Alia Devick knocking in a cross.
“We’ve practiced that previous to this week, following up on those kinds of crosses. It actually worked during the game,” Miller said.