Hersey keeps rolling

Fresh off its Mid-Suburban League championship victory in a shootout Thursday over Barrington, host Hersey flexed its muscles Saturday by beating Vernon Hills 6-0 in the Huskies' regional opener.

A hat trick from Alex Gardasevic, and 2 goals by Griffin Dwyer lifted the No. 15-seeded Huskies (10-8-2) into a rematch with top-seeded Barrington on Wednesday at 5 p.m.

"When we went to the sectional seeding meeting, I argued that we were a better team than our record showed," said Huskies coach Darren Llewellyn. "But it's hard to win anyone over when we were 3-7-0 at the time.

"Obviously we have improved a great deal since that meeting, and now we must turn our focus towards this Wednesday as we have now become the hunted team instead of the hunters as we were Thursday when we faced Barrington."

The 18th-seeded Cougars (1-18-1), who started six sophomores, had the better run of things in the first 25 minutes behind the midfield quartet of Josh Zepeda, Spencer Raak, Gene Pavelko and Alex Lang.

But the Huskies struck first, as Dwyer and Gardasevic scored two minutes apart.

Dwyer converted a penalty kick at 16 minutes, then Gardasevic finished off a rebound of his close-range blast that Cougars keeper Phillip Maciaszek stopped.

"That's kind of been the story of our team this season," said Cougars coach Shannon Etnyre. "We start fast, but give up a couple of tough goals and find ourself down 2 or 3-0."

After the Huskies scored on an own goal, striker Kyle Pietro assisted on Gardasevic's second goal at 27 minutes, a header.

"I thought we played (Hersey) well for the first 15 minutes.. but it's real difficult to stay in a match against a team like that when you give up early goals," said Cougars senior captain Matt Allen. "We've really improved from the start of the season, and there will be a lot of guys coming back next season to help things even better for the soccer program."

Dwyer's one-timer just before intermission, and Gardasevic's 15th of the season at 53 minutes built the lead.

"It's hard to say if we gained a whole lot from today," Dwyer said. "But in the second half, we got back to playing better soccer with a lot combination work between our midfield and forwards."

St. Viator 5, St. Charles East 0: Shane Owens, Trevor Wheeler and Victor Mendoza scored first-half goals for the host Lions (18-0-3) in their 5-0 nonconference win over St. Charles East.