Conant tips St. Charles North in a real crowd-pleaser

As early season girls soccer games go, this was a very good one.

Conant and St. Charles North entertained an appreciative, big audience for 80 minutes Thursday with the host Cougars (2-0-0) getting a pair of spectacular strikes from Courtney Raetzman and coming away with a 2-1 victory in nonconference.

The two-time all-state striker brought her club alive with 2 goals within 60 seconds midway through the first half to give Conant a 2-1 lead. The Cougars then battled the North Stars (0-1-0) for nearly an hour to earn their second win of the week.

“That was quite an exciting match for the first week of the season,” said relieved Conant coach Jason Franco. “We knew Ruth (Vostal, St. Charles North’s coach) does a great job and always has a very talented team, but tonight at times it kind of had that playoff atmosphere feeling. It’s great to see our girls respond so early in the regular season.”

The North Stars, who lost 10 players to graduation from a 13-4-1 club which fell in overtime to Schaumburg in a sectional semifinal late last May, opened its season with a marvelous 20 minutes of play to put the 3A third-place finishers on their heels and chasing the lead after Natalie Winkates slotted past freshman keeper Hailey Anderson following a Kelly Manski corner at the quarter hour.

“With 7 sophomores and 1 freshman on our roster, you never really know what to expect in your first game of the season,” said Vostal, “but we came out with a lot of energy and fight in our game, and really did a lot of good things all throughout the night to make this opener a real positive one, and something we can build off of as we go forward.

St. Charles North was missing a key ingredient at midfield in Alex Gage, who is on the injured list to begin the year.

Much of the success in the early stages of the match for the visitors was due to their ability to win nearly every 50-50 ball, whether on the ground or in the air, with Winkates leading the way. The Stars also found terrific pace and energy from senior Lauren Koehl, who together with Sophie Pohl gave the Cougars all sorts of trouble.

Manski’s looping corner from the far flag and into the 6-yard box was kept alive by her teammates, allowing an opportunistic Winkates to give the Stars the lead.

“The way they came after us in the first 10-15 minutes, I thought we were going to be in a lot of trouble tonight,” said Franco.

Enter Raetzman.

The Kentucky-bound four-year star took matters into her own hands at 23 minutes, collecting a loose ball 35 yards away from Stars keeper Carly Dietrich, and with a quick burst unloaded a 25-yard thunderbolt past Dietrich, who had no chance of stopping the drive.

Less than a minute later, Raetzman was at it again, splitting a pair of defenders with speed on the ball before going past Dietrich once again to bring the home fans out of their seats one more time.

“This was a good game for us to be in because it will help show our younger players how hard we have to play against really good competition, and when the games begin to really count for something,” said Raetzman.

“Those two goals took some of our momentum away, but I thought we came back to play (hard) in the second half, which was a good sign with so many new players on our team this season,” said Koehl.

Franco may have found a running mate for Raetzman in freshman Leah Celarek, who at times was at the center of much of the Cougars’ attack during her time on the pitch. Vostal was just as pleased with the work of sophomore Jenny Barr, who in her first match with the varsity was asked to mark Raetzman after the break, and received high marks from the Stars coach.

Both sides had their chances to get on the scoreboard in the second half, with each keeper called upon on a handful of occasions, while the back line of each club stepped up with ferocious and expert tackles to help keep their opponents atbay.

“It was a very good game to watch, with some terrific individual efforts from players on both sides, and one that we might look back on as an important victory and stepping stone to bigger and better things later on,” said Franco.