Pressure results in Wheaton North win against Hoffman Estates
From far across the field, the words of a Wheaton North player exhorting his teammates drifted into the hot, hazy, humid evening.
"Keep up the pressure! Keep up the pressure!"
The Falcons heeded that missive Monday and the result was a 1-0 victory over Hoffman Estates in a Lake Park Hillner Classic tournament game played at Wheaton North.
"Coach was telling us, even though we were up 1-0, we looked like we were the team that was down 1-0," said Falcons junior forward Will Wanzenberg, "just the way we were pressing and constantly attacking, pressuring them when they had the ball and trying to win the ball back."
A win like that is a major confidence builder for a team that already had plenty of it coming into the season after reaching the sectional semifinals a year ago, said senior forward Alex Beausoleil.
"Coming off of last year, we thought we should have gone farther than we did, so we kind of have that fire beneath us. We want to go further than we did last year," he said. "We want to place in state."
Sometimes the best defense is a high-octane offense.
"That's something we've been working for four years to create in here," said Falcons coach Rob Stassen, "our forwards getting that high pressure and being that first line of defense, and they did it for 80 minutes. It was absolutely outstanding."
Wheaton North, which improved to 2-0-1, got the only goal it needed in the 11th minute off the boot of senior defender Sunday Moo on a free kick from senior teammate Ethan Shikany. But don't let that fool you.
The Falcons kept the pedal to the metal all night long, outshooting the Hawks 15-1. In fact the pressure was so intense that Hoffman Estates (2-2) managed to get off its shot with just 12 seconds left in the contest.
They needed every bit of that pressure to offset a terrific night in goal by Hoffman Estates senior Tyler Kelly, who finished with 9 saves.
How tough was Kelly? He went up high to make a huge save in the upper-right corner of the net on a header from Beausoleil in the 37th minute. In the 46th minute Wanzenberg found Beausoleil in the front of the net, but Kelly parried away a potential second goal.
Thirteen minutes later, Kelly knocked away another sure goal, this time by Falcons sophomore Graham Stephenson. It did result in a Wheaton North corner kick, which the Hawks cleared.
"He kept us in the game," Hoffman Estates coach Sean Armstrong said of Kelly. "Wheaton did an incredible job of putting pressure on us, and time after time either through dead balls or corners they were finding the slots and he was just resilient. It was all heart out there."
All in a night's work for Kelly … though he would have preferred a "W."
"It was pretty hard, yeah, because it was only off of one play that we lost the game," he said. "We stuck with them the entire time. We still held our ground, and we had our chances but we didn't finish it."