Boys soccer: Alfaro's last-minute goal lifts WW South over Oswego East in regional opener

Edgar Guzman is a confident young man.

So confident that the Wheaton Warrenville South junior knew senior Gael Alfaro would score the game-winning goal when he lined up for a corner kick with time running out during its semifinal game against Oswego East on Wednesday night in the Class 3A Plainfield North regional.

Alfaro's goal with 1:32 remaining lifted the Tigers to a 3-2 victory and thwarted the Wolves' attempt to overcome a 2-0 halftime deficit.

WW South advanced to face Oswego, a winner over Plainfield North, in Saturday's regional final.

"I knew it was going to go in," Guzman said. "I knew he had that header. He's always scoring those goals. We've been practicing the last few practices and so the opportunity was there to shoot it right on the first post and I got lucky enough to hit Gael on the header."

It had to feel like déjà vu for Alfaro, who recalled a 3-2 win against Batavia in which the Tigers led 2-0 at half, allowed the Bulldogs to tie the game and then won it late on an Alfaro free kick.

"We never stop fighting on any play," Alfaro said. "We practice those, putting it in the penalty boxes. Nikhil (Bawa) was supposed to be there but he was a little bit more back and fortunately I wast here to finish it off."

Oswego East tied the game at 2-2 on senior Dupablo Parodis-Yu's penalty kick with 24:02 remaining.

The Wolves had just gotten on the scoreboard a few minutes earlier when Parodis-Yu sent a pass to sophomore Dylan Drendel, who blasted a 35-yard goal to slice their deficit in half.

"I passed the ball to Dupab (Parodis-Yu) and originally I was just going to stay back and assist and then (Oswego East coach Steve Szymanski) told me to just get up further and I just stepped up and instead of running into the box I saw there was a lot of space and he was getting tripled-teammed as he always does, because he's Dupab, and then so I got the ball and shot it and it went in and was a big momentum boost for us," Drendel said.

Wheaton Warrenville South didn't create many chances in the first half, but the Tigers made the most of the ones it did.

Senior Marco Gonzalez dished off to Alfaro who fired in a shot with 31:14 left in the opening half to give the Tigers the early lead.