Girls soccer: Clousing’s 3 goals help Wheaton Warrenville South handle Batavia
Plenty of scoring chances have come Wheaton Warrenville South’s way in recent action, but the Tigers have not been able to score very much.
That changed during Thursday’s season finale after junior Kelsey Clousing scored three goals and assisted on the other two during a 5-0 victory at Batavia.
Wheaton Warrenville South (13-1-5, 4-0-3) finished the regular season with a single loss and none in conference but fell short of a conference title.
St. Charles East secured that after a 3-0 victory over Geneva.
“I feel like we’ve played good during these conference games, but tying three times stinks,” Clousing said. “But finishing today 5-0 was good. I feel like we worked really well together snd when we finish in the end it’s so fun.”
Junior defender Ashley Alman played a pair of long balls into Clousing as the Tigers wasted little time in jumping ahead 2-0. They extended the lead to 3-0 into halftime after Clousing assisted sophomore Khaira Rahmouni.
“I got the ball from Ashley and just dribbled it and then shot it,” Clousing said. “On the other one from (senior) Dayami (Arias) it was off a cross and she just made a move past me and I just one-timed it. Now we’ll try to move on and win regionals, sectionals. We could play Wheaton North in a regional final so that’s the top thing right now.”
The Saints (18-0-5, 5-0-2) got past a stubborn Vikings (11-6-1, 4-3) squad after clinging to a 1-0 lead at half on an Anika Dodrill goal on a Mya Leon assist.
After Sophia Wollenberg gave the Saints a cushion by converting a PK early in the second half, Leon became the school’s all-time single-season scorer with her 44th goal of the spring with 11:27 remaining.
“I don’t think our girls or staff expected to be where we’re at right now, but we have confidence every game and feel we can win,” Saints coach Vince DiNuzzo said. “And playing with that confidence, we knew coming in the last match day was win or tie, but we didn’t want to tie so they went out and performed and got all three points.”
Arias delivered a short pass to set up Clousing for the hat trick with 26:55 remaining, making it 4-0.
Clousing collected her second assist when she found senior Addison Poquette 22 seconds after she had just scored.
“We have a lot great players who are able to connect up top and able to finish,” Poquette said, “We have a lot of players we can rely on to finish in final third. A really big part of our success is it’s not just one player who is capable of scoring.”
The Tigers just hadn’t been able to do it in conference ties to Wheaton North, St. Charles North and St. Charles East.
“We came off of two ties that we outshot the opposition 50-2 and scored one goal so we needed some momentum,” Tigers coach Guy Callipari said. “We needed to feel like we could be clinical again in the final third when we had our opportunities and trying to get the right combination. We have a lot of quality, we don’t have much in quantity, but what we do have on the field has a pretty good sense of inner play and building and thinking, with a nice integrity for the game which was I hope everyone saw tonight, that we are capable from our defensive third to our offensive third, and the people you count on showed up tonight snd it’s a lot of fun.”
Realizing those ties kept them from winning a conference title, the Tigers are motivated by the feeling of losing that accompanied such draws.
“We wanted to finish out in a positive note heading into playoffs,” Tigers senior defender Chloe Trinkl said. “We worked really hard together and just completed a lot of passes. We worked well through the middle, through the back and we finished today. But we definitely feel those ties. We see those as losses but we take those and look at those and see the statistics and know we outshot a bunch of teams but didn’t finish and know we should’ve won those games, but didn’t.”
Batavia (5-10-2, 2-3-2) has also struggled to find the back of the net, getting shutout for the seventh time this spring.