Girls soccer: South Elgin earns bragging rights in matchup of Upstate Eight division winners

West Chicago was without star forward Molly Merkel.

South Elgin was without their starting goalkeeper Lilly Rodriguez.

The shorthanded squads met Wednesday night in a battle for bragging rights in the Upstate Eight Conference, but had to do it without key players who helped them win their respective divisions in the conference this spring.

The Wildcats, winners of the East Division, were able to rebound and tie the game after surrendering a goal, but yielded a pair of goals in the second half as the West Division-winning Storm earned a 3-1 victory.

South Elgin (13-6-2) also beat West Chicago (15-5) when the Storm hosted the Wildcats, blanking them 2-0 on Apr. 30.

“I think for most of us it’s kind of like, all right is this really a conference championship because we had a conference meeting last night and you crown an East Division champ and West Division champion, but we’re two separate conferences that are sort of like cousins,” Storm coach Jerzy Skowron said.

“So we knew it wasn’t exactly a conference championship but we go into it thinking bragging rights. We want it and selfishly, it’s my first senior class and we have never lost an Upstate Eight game in my four years so the bragging rights are extra for us, and we wanted a good match before postseason because we don’t play again until Tuesday.”

The Storm struck first in the 15th minute when Avi Hernandez found Avery Stokes for the 1-0 lead.

Finally answering in the 44th minute, the Wildcats took advantage of South Elgin’s situation in goal with Rodriguez sidelined with a broken thumb as junior Kaylee Kreitzer turned a free kick into the equalizer.

“We knew they didn’t have a goalie and we didn’t really have a chance to do anything so the free kick was one of our only chances,” Wildcats coach J. Cesar Gomez. “Kaylee had a chance to do it and popped it over her head, and Kaylee is a kid who is very hungry to score and she is going to try to score and fortunately enough we scored one.”

Less than 10 minutes later and South Elgin struck again, taking the lead for good on an Avi Hernandez goal in the 53rd minute.

“Nevaeh (Gyurko) is left footed and she took the corner kick and it curved in,” Hernandez said. “I knew it was coming right to me so I just headed it in and it was good because we were tied 1-1 at that point and it gave us the momentum to keep going and get another goal. We knew one goal wasn’t going to be enough so we had to get more goals and getting that second and third goal really built our momentum for us in the second half.”

Gyurko, who became South Elgin’s all-time leading scorer on Senior Night on May 4, gave the Storm a cushion in the 63rd minute.

“We wanted to win and to go into the playoffs with a good, positive win,” South Elgin junior captain Lucy Tomasi said. “This win will help us with momentum and push us. We’d be more down and have to lift ourselves after a loss, but now we’re all positive which will help us against Glenbard East.”

It certainly helps having players step up, especially when they’re needed most, like in compensating for the loss of your lone keeper.

“We have played (senior and captain) Ellie Vidic everywhere in the four years she’s been here and she’s a three-year captain that’s never going to get the credit she really deserves,” Skowron said. “And (senior center midfielder) Laura (Garcia) did a fantastic job. She will never get recognized the way she needs to. She’s that important to us that when she’s not in there we struggle.”

The Wildcats expect Merkel back for Thursday’s game against Willowbrook.

“South Elgin is a good team and they’ve been good for awhile,” Gomez said. “We just didn’t have our speed up top without senior Molly Merkel. We had everything else, but we didn’t have somebody who could challenge up top so I would say that had a lot to do with what was going on today.”