Boys soccer: Guppy, Naperville North find scoring touch
Naperville North went looking for space Thursday, and the Huskies found it in the Waubonsie Valley penalty area.
The Huskies cruised to a 6-1 boys soccer victory against their DuPage Valley Conference rival on Thursday in Naperville. Senior Ian Guppy tallied 3 goals, and junior defender Colin Iverson scored 2 goals.
"It's nice to get a hat trick," Guppy said. "Adding to the stat sheet is really nice, but I think I owe this to my team. I made the runs at the right time, and they played me the nice balls. I was at the right (place) at the right moment."
Guppy couldn't help but notice the space he found in front of the Warriors net.
"They kind of sagged off a little bit, which was a little surprising at first, but we kind of adjusted to that and I saw that and I just made the runs and adjusted," said Guppy, who not only garnered his first hat trick but the Huskies' first of the season.
The Huskies (17-1-1, 5-1) had a lot of success off restarts, including a couple of throw-ins from senior co-captain Jack Barry. Barry finished with 3 assists.
"Restarts are our best weapon so far," Guppy said, "and we just kept utilizing that today. And 3 assists from Barry shows even how unselfish of a player he is and how much of an impact he has on the team."
Senior co-captain Will Ritzmann added the sixth and final goal for the Huskies, who have struggled to score this year without a dominant forward.
"We're really scoring by committee this year," Barry said. "We don't really care who it is. Guppy's been stepping in lately, and it's been him a lot and it will be probably in the future. But we don't really care who it is."
It's unusual for this matchup to result in such a big margin.
"We've got some friends on the other team," Barry said. "We knew that they'd come out and play hard. We knew if we took care of our jobs, though, that it would be in our hands."
"Obviously, coming in we know Waubonsie is a good program," added Huskies coach Jim Konrad. "They've had success. The conference is really good this year. Everybody is kind of up and down. We've been steady for the most part. Not great, but we've been steady."
Waubonsie Valley got its goal in the 20th minute from Stephen Spano, who drew the Warriors even at 1-1 briefly. Guppy answered three minutes later with his second goal of the game, Iverson scored in the 32nd minute and Guppy added his third and final goal of the game in the 40th to make the score 4-1 at halftime.