Boys soccer: Naperville North stays unbeaten with sectional championship win over Naperville Central
Naperville North’s Sam Hess hammered home a 33-yard shot with 36 seconds remaining in the first half of Friday’s Class 3A Naperville North sectional final against Naperville Central.
His fellow senior teammate Josh Pedersen scored his 30th goal of the season with a little more than 14 minutes left in the game.
Behind those two big offensive plays, the Huskies remained unbeaten and advanced with a 2-0 victory.
Naperville North (22-0-4) will face either Collinsville or Normal (Community) at Tuesday’s Class 3A Normal (Community) supersectional.
“I’m the type of person when I score it kind of just goes to the back of my head and it’s gone,” Hess said. “I’m more about not letting in any goals.”
The Huskies aren’t giving up many this fall. They recorded their 16th shutout and extended their shutout streak to six games. They haven’t allowed a goal in three weeks.
Despite their stingy defense, it was the blast to the back of the net from Hess that had everyone talking.
“Look, the ball dropped to my feet and in this type of game, it’s (Naperville) Central so we’re going to take any chance we can take,” Hess said. “I took a swing at it and hit the ball nice and it turned out well.”
The teams only combined for a few scoring chances in the first half.
Naperville Central (16-3-1) also dropped a regular season game to the Huskies, 1-0, on Sept. 16. The Redhawks haven’t beaten the Huskies since sweeping them during their 2022 state championship season.
“The whole game was ugly,” Huskies coach Jim Konrad said. “It was a horrible soccer game in terms of soccer, but both teams played super hard, and they are an awesome team. They’re incredible and (coach) Troy (Adams) did some clever things up top to try to pull our back line apart and Sam (Hess) did a nice job of solving it so I couldn’t be more proud of the boys.”
The Redhawks were especially dangerous on restarts, but Huskies goalkeeper Jack Bouska hung tough.
“There were some big moments,” Bouska said. “On the restarts obviously. On the Ryan Gervase header I was able to reach and get a hand on it and parry it. That was a very big moment and I think a big moment shift in the game, too.”
Pedersen scored off a ball from Hess with 14:32 remaining to give the Huskies some breathing room.
“We were getting countered and Sam (Hess) made a big play, playing me over the top and I was just one-on-one with the goalie and played it over the top with a chip,” Pedersen said. “This is so great. Such a great feeling to go into playoffs undefeated and to keep it going.”