WW South's Cup win is picture perfect
Wheaton Warrenville South's girls soccer players gave their cellphone cameras a postgame workout Tuesday.
The Tigers regained possession of the Wheaton Cup with their 2-1 victory at cross-town rival Wheaton North, and they celebrated by taking turns taking photos with the traveling trophy long after the game ended.
"It means everything," Tigers sophomore Evelyn Demsher said. "We've been practicing so hard to get this Cup, especially since we had to come back early from spring break solely for this reason, to make sure we were ready for Wheaton North. We haven't won it in a while ... and it just means a lot for us to finally get it back in South territory."
It's the first time the Tigers (2-1, 1-0 DuPage Valley Conference) have won the Cup since 2013, a year before the current seniors arrived at WW South.
"It's a long time coming, and I think there was a little incentive that the boys were able to win out in the fall, so it's sitting there in the cabinet and then there's a space there that has been vacated," Tigers coach Guy Callipari said. "So there was that incentive for the girls to fill that gap."
Wheaton North (3-4, 0-3) got off to a great start, scoring in the fourth minute. Midfielder Niamh Kane, crashing the far post on a Margaret Hupp corner kick, found herself unmarked 5 yards from goal and smashed a header into the net.
"We're extraordinarily dangerous on restarts offensively," Falcons coach Tim McEvilly said. "Unfortunately we gave up two goals on defensive restarts. (The Tigers) did a good job the last 15 minutes of the first half kind of getting their bearings and trying to turn the tide. The second half was fairly even. We just didn't create the restarts in the second half. We were a little more passive trying to get behind them, but they did a good job pressuring the ball."
Callipari credited his players with sticking to their game plan despite the early deficit.
"From the start we wanted this really badly, and we knew that we couldn't let a goal like that just bring us down early in the game," Demsher said. "So we all kept our heads up because we knew what we needed to do to win this game and get the Cup."
This turned out to be Demsher's night. Demsher scored her first two goals of the season, one in each half.
Audrey Siebert and Julia Hildebrand had the assists.
"I noticed that the defense was playing really high up, so I anticipated my run a little bit and waited for the perfect spot to make it and the ball was there," Demsher said.
"The second one was a throw-in," McEvilly said of Demsher's goals. "We saw the ball go out of bounds and we all turned our back on the ball and they didn't. They kept on playing. The other one was a goal kick. We let them win a ball and they get behind us.
"We have a problem sometimes where we try to catch our breaths at the wrong times. We've got to recognize how important those moments are. You can't take your eye off the ball."