North Stars finish regular season with win

In the last regular-season game for both teams, St. Charles North and Batavia rolled substitutions almost in a free-form manner on Saturday.

Part of that was due to St. Charles North's celebration of senior day and a desire to make sure every senior got time on the school's stadium field one last time.

But the postseason is just around the corner, and this was a final time to give players a chance to perform without playoff pressure.

St. Charles North won the nonconference contest 2-0 and enters the postseason with a solid 15-3-1 record.

"We had games Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then we went hard in practice on Thursday and Friday," St. Charles North coach Ruth Vostal said. "Some of it was just us getting our legs back under us. With it being senior day, we were able to put people in different spots. But I think we created a number of chances."

The win concludes St. Charles North's home portion of the schedule.

"It's a bittersweet feeling," St. Charles North senior Caitlin Winkelman said. "It's sad, but it's also really good because we came out and had a good game going into playoffs. This is a good win because Batavia's a good team."

St. Charles North's stadium field is more suited for miniature golf these days, having failed to even partially recover from damage it suffered in the fall. It has plenty of ruts, grooves, some grassy patches and those sidelines that go uphill.

Eleven minutes into the match, the North Stars negotiated the tricky terrain and opened the scoring. Winkelman played the ball to Maggie Hamilton. Hamilton drove the ball, which reached Leah DeMoss, who took a touch past the Batavia goalkeeper and scored.

Batavia struggled to put its game together for any extended time in the contest.

"We got out of rhythm," Batavia coach Jim McAlpin. "We got into their game. They dominated in the air and dominated in the midfield. We just couldn't slow the tempo down."

Batavia (7-7-1) did have chances and got the ball into dangerous spots in the penalty area at times. But North Stars goalkeeper Vicki Traven never had to make a goal-saving stop throughout the 80 minutes of play.

"They dominated us and what we could do was to hang on," McAlpin said. "We gave it our best, but they were far superior."

With the Bulldogs struggling, the next strong chances fell to St. Charles North. DeMoss had a shot cleared off the line by Elizabeth Barnes 2 minutes into the second half.

But the moment that really ignited the North Stars was a shot that didn't go in. Winkelman hit the crossbar 14 minutes into the half and suddenly the hosts attacked the net like sharks move to blood in the water.

Hamilton scored when she took an Alex Messacar right wing cross, moved past the goalkeeper and scored.

Ashley Capone narrowly missed with 20 minutes left when she hit a shot just wide from a Hamilton pass.

"We made a lot of opportunities," Winkelman said. "We probably could have finished on a more of them. But we got two goals and that's all we needed and I think we did well offensively."