Naperville North makes it look easy

Naperville North saved its best performance against West Aurora for the postseason.

The third-seeded Huskies drew DuPage Valley Conference foe West Aurora in Wednesday's boys soccer regional semifinal in Naperville and made quick work of the Blackhawks, cruising to a 7-0 victory.

Three Huskies scored in the first 15 minutes, giving the regional hosts a considerable amount of early momentum.

"Even to score the first goal early kind of takes the pressure off everybody," Huskies coach Jim Konrad said. "Obviously, we're the higher-seeded team expected to win, there's still that fear in the back of your mind that (says), 'What if we can't score?'

"After we got the two other quick goals, then it was kind of like, 'Let's keep coming, let's keep playing hard,' because obviously we have a lot of respect for West Aurora."

In their only previous meeting this season, West Aurora (3-17-2) kept the Huskies (15-3-4) in a 0-0 tie until halftime. By halftime on Wednesday, the Huskies had a comfortable 6-0 lead.

Junior midfielder Andrew Menendez scored twice in the first half and added an assist on Brandon Gongorek's goal.

"(My teammates) were just playing me good balls, and I finished them. I should have had a couple more," Menendez said. "We have a really deep team, and on any given day any of us can score."

That depth led to goals from six Huskies on the evening, giving Konrad a reason to smile.

"We've said all year that we've got a team with a lot of depth, and we've been waiting for someone to step up and kind of be that go-to guy," Konrad said. "Luckily we've had a number of guys step up and be able to score goals for us."

The Blackhawks played aggressively at the outset of the game, yet were unable to get any rallies going on offense.

"We thought if we don't make any mistakes, let's take the first strike at them and maybe hopefully we'll gain more confidence as the game goes on," West Aurora coach Joe Sustersic said. "When we gave up that first goal and the second goal, then the floodgates opened.

"Naperville North's a very good team, and you can't give them prizes and gifts early on in the game. That just made them be so much more confident and made us question what we were doing."

With the victory Naperville North grabbed a spot in Friday's regional final against Plainfield Central.