Fremd 4, Conant 0

Fremd's girls soccer team received just what the doctor ordered Friday night when facing one of its biggest challenges in the Mid-Suburban League.

Senior Alexandra Ehr, planning to study medicine on an academic scholarship to Ohio State, scored 2 goals while junior Laura Mayer and sophomore Crystal Rohan added one apiece for the Vikings in a 4-0 shutout over visiting Conant (13-3-1, 7-2-1).

Fremd (11-2-1, 8-1) took over sole possession of first place and needs to win only one of its two remaining games, against either Rolling Meadows (today) and Hoffman Estates (Monday), to claim the MSL Cup.

"This puts us in a good spot," said Vikings coach Steve Keller. "It was nice to watch this kind of effort because the kids haven't been clicking that well."

Everything seemed to click for the Vikings on their Senior Night as Mayer got things rolling with her fourth goal of the spring.

She drilled a curling 19-yarder on a free kick to the upper-middle part of the goal for a 1-0 lead 10 minutes into the game.

"We didn't want to go down 1-0 early," said Conant coach Jason Franco. "We wanted to try and go 0-0 as long as we could and maybe poke a goal in and sneak away with a win."

Instead, Fremd snuck in a second goal less than four minutes later.

Ehr rolled one in from 15 yards out after Conant failed to clear the ball after her first shot was batted away by goalkeeper Monica Danek (5 saves).

Danek made a nice leaping stop of freshman Elise Kotsakis's header 20 minutes in the second half.

But Ehr took a pass from Kotsakis and made it 3-0 when she dribbled 10 yards before finding the net with a chip shot with 15 minutes left in the half. It was her 11th goal of the season.

Rohan (4 goals this spring) capped the scoring when she accepted a pass a minute later from freshman Nicole Leginski and fired a 26-yard line drive that was tipped into the net by a leaping Danek.

"Obviously, they (Fremd) are the class of our conference," Franco said. "We've given up only 6 goals all season. Monica hasn't had to make saves like those all season."

Fremd's defense kept the Cougars at bay most of the evening.

Keller said he always expects Katrina Jakobsze, Allison Casey, Austin Henning and Lauren Zimmer to do the solid work they did on Friday.

"That was Danielle Romano's and Kakobsze's better games of the season," he added. "Danielle is taking more of a leadership role vocally now. I thought Susan Plager and Arianna Foster did a great job playing the wide position."

Franco praised the Vikings.

"That was a very impressive showing by them," he said. "I thought Becky Knoll played hard for us and Brittany Bodziak is always dangerous, but when you're going against five tough defenders, it's tough."

"We didn't come out the way we wanted to start the game," said Cougars senior Meghan Melone. "Fremd came out hard and we just didn't answer them."

Sophomore Allison Norenberg started in goal for Fremd while junior Samantha Ryan took over for the final 13 minutes of the game as the Vikings recorded their seventh shutout .