Girls soccer: Batavia wins rivalry matchup on Tri-Cities Night; STC schools play to a draw

The end of the first half Tuesday couldn’t have gone better for Batavia.

After entering the final minutes of the half down a goal to Geneva, the Bulldogs found two goals in the final minute of play. They added two more goals in the second half to secure a 4-2 victory over Geneva in the first game of Tri-Cities Night at St. Charles East.

“I don’t think we came out very well, and the girls would agree with that, but we did a nice job of responding,” Bulldogs coach Mark Gianfrancesco said. “There were some goofy goals, but that’s the game of soccer. You cross the ball in the middle and you never know what’s going to happen.”

Sophomore Leah Zimberoff scored the go-ahead goal for the Bulldogs (6-5-1, 3-1 DuKane) just 30 seconds after Geneva tied the game at 2-2. The sophomore took a pass from senior Natalie Warner just outside the box before sinking it into the bottom far corner of the goal.

“I just turned the defender and I shot it and it went in,” Zimberoff. “I saw the open space and took the opportunity.”

“After that, our energy was really up and we were like ‘Yeah, we’ve got this.’ ”

It was the second time Zimberoff contributed on a go-ahead goal. The sophomore also had a cross that led to an own goal to give Batavia a 2-1 lead into halftime.

Emma Wecker scored the Bulldogs’ first goal with one minute remaining in the first half. The junior took a shot from 25 yards out, which bounced off the crossbar before bouncing off the goalie and into the net to tie the game at 1-1.

“We knew that time was running out, so we knew we had to be there to take the shot and have the confidence, we’d be good,” Wecker said. “I saw nobody was pressuring me, so I turned around and shot it as hard as I could.”

Warner added an insurance goal in the 70th minute, adding a cushion to Batavia’s lead.

Sophomore Olivia Pohlman got the first goal of the game in the 23rd minute for Geneva (4-7-3, 1-2). Senior Riley Pryor also found the back of the net in the 49th minute that tied the game at 2-2.

“I feel like for long stretches, we dominated the run of play, but in the end it comes down to us being young and losing focus,” Vikings coach Megan Owens said. “We did what we needed to do in the field, and then we gave up two goals in the final minutes. That’s just something that comes with inexperience and being a younger team, and it’s something that we just need to work at.”

Owens said that despite being on the wrong side of the scoreboard, it was a great game experience-wise for the team, which only returned two starters from last season.

“Any Tri-Cities rivalry game is great,” Owens said. “We’re fortunate to be in an area where all four high schools are always competitive every year. I just wish that the scoreboard was a little different this time, but it’ll help us prepare for the postseason.”

St. Charles North 1, St. Charles East 1

Round 2 of the crosstown rivalry between St. Charles North and St. Charles East was a bit different from the initial rendition.

After the first matchup ended in a 3-0 victory for the Saints, the North Stars pushed the pace with an early goal, while the Saints responded with a goal late in the second half to force a 1-1 tie in the second game of Tri-Cities Night.

“In a game where you have the lead early, you’d like to come away with a win,” North Stars coach Brian Harks said. “But the amount of growth that we’ve showed over the season from the last time we played them to this game, I thought it was spectacular. Every player on the field worked their butts off.”

The North Stars (5-4-3, 1-1-2) controlled the ball for the majority of the first half and proved it with an early goal after junior Kaitlyn Nudera snuck past the Saints’ defenders and placed the ball into the back of the net just nine minutes into the contest.

“Obviously it was an amazing feeling,” said Nudera, whose goal was her first of the season. “But what made it so special was how our team went so hard off the bat to make that happen. If we didn’t fight that hard in the beginning, it would have never happened.”

The early goal was one of a few changes the team had made since their first bout with the Saints back on March 29. The North Stars also switched up their field formation in order to better contain Saints freshman Mya Leon, who scored a hat trick in the last match, by putting sophomore Aubri Magana on her the entire way.

“Aubri played excellent defense and did her job perfectly,” Harks said. “St. Charles East is loaded up top and finds the net regularly, but our defensive line really played well supporting one another and helping each other out.”

The game plan worked all the way up to the 65th minute of the game, when Leon managed to worm her way through the North Stars defenders and loft a ball over the goalkeeper’s head and into the net to make it 1-1.

“When I saw the ball, I knew I just had to score,” said Leon, who now has 30 goals on the season for the Saints. “I saw the opportunity, and I took it, and it felt amazing when I did it.”

The Saints (14-2-2, 2-0-1) struggled out of the gate to respond to the North Stars’ changes on the pitch. But coach Vince DiNuzzo said while it’s not the result he wanted, the match showed the team’s ability to respond while behind.

“We’re not going to make excuses for ourselves, we have to be better than what we did in that first half,” DiNuzzo said. “But they responded well in that second half, and we played much better. I just wish there were a couple more minutes on the clock, because we definitely had some momentum at the end.”