Girls soccer: Tumility delivers late, leads Naperville Central past Metea Valley
Callie Tumility figured the time was right to shoot.
The Naperville Central senior’s goal with 11:07 remaining in Tuesday’s DuPage Valley Conference game against Metea Valley was all the scoring the Redhawks needed.
Tumility added a second goal just 43 seconds later and sophomore Emerson Burke buried a penalty kick during the 3-0 victory.
“We didn't really take that many shots in the first half,” Tumility said. “And I came off right before I scored, and I was just like, you know what, I just think I'm gonna have to shoot it. We also noticed that their back line was kind of sitting a little deeper, you know, so, we started having a little bit more chances in the second half. And then, I got the space, so I just took it, took the shot. Great ball, which also gave me the space from Emerson (Burke) for sure.”
Naperville Central (15-1-1, 2-1) had just won the Ed Watson Naperville Invitational 24 hours earlier Monday night.
“I reiterate that it’s a team and these are team games,” Redhawks coach Troy Adams said. “We had players playing a lot of minutes at the end there. I mean, anytime you lose (injury) a player like (senior) Bella (Brozek), but you lose a player of Bella's quality early (24:43 remaining in the first half). That's normally a player that plays 70 minutes a game. And so now we're moving people around and the ability for all of the girls to adapt to all night.
“So that ability for us to work together as a team and get the players to all do their job and accept that sometimes it's not what they maybe are used to doing,” Adams continued. “But they're gonna give it their best is a huge part of our success.”
Metea Valley (11-3, 2-1) was unable to create many scoring chances.
“I thought in the back third we did a really, really good job of being patient, being composed,” Adams said. “I don't know, I'd have to go back, but I don't think they had a ton of shots in the run of play. They had a lot of good corner kicks, a lot of good head balls, but in the run of play, I thought our defenders did a really good job.”
The Redhawks are accustomed to jumping ahead early. This time they arrived in a bunch.
“We’ve definitely worked hard in the first five, 10 minutes of our games to get that first goal so we’re not tied,” junior Nicole Smith said. “So here we are today tied, but Callie came in and everyone honestly came into the second half ready to score, ready to go, go, go because we knew this was a must-win game.”