St. Charles N. handles pressure, Schaumburg
No matter which of the five kicks in a penalty kick shootout a player is slated to take, there is bound to be pressure. Shootouts are pressure-packed situations by their very nature.
But Lauren Koehl stepped up to take the fifth of St. Charles North’s kicks on Friday night with a pressure unique to the shootout with Schaumburg: she could win the match for her team by converting her kick.
Koehl kept cool, shot to the left, then braced herself for the onslaught of teammates racing to congratulate her after that kick hit the net and the North Stars earned themselves a trip to Tuesday’s Class 3A Barrington supersectional thanks to a 5-3 shootout win after 120 minutes of scoreless soccer.
“I told myself I couldn’t think about anything,” Koehl said. “We practice these all the time. Sometimes I do miss them, but I had to think to myself, ‘don’t miss this one. It’s going into the back of the net.’”
St. Charles North was clinical with its penalty kicks. Alyssa Brandt, Kelly Manski, Alex Gage and Natalie Winkates scored before Koehl clinched the victory.
“We work on (penalty kicks) from the get-go, from the first week of tryouts,” St. Charles North coach Ruth Vostal said. “We try to put them into different pressure situations. So I felt confident once we got to that.”
While St. Charles North keeper Carly Dietrich did not make a save in the shootout, she did guess the right way on half the shots. Ali Schmalz, Alexa Ben and Teagan Eberle scored Schaumburg’s kicks. A fourth round miss and Koehl’s successful fifth kick settled the shootout.
“Had she not missed it, it still would have been a big deal,” Koehl said. “Going last, it’s still like you’ve got to bring it home, and that’s what I did.”
St. Charles North advances to the supersectional for the third time in its 12-year girls soccer history. They face the host Fillies, who defeated Huntley 2-0 in Friday’s Rockford Boylan sectional title match.
“We forget that we’re a young team,” Vostal said. “There’s not a ton of people with playoff experience. We try to tell them what the experiences are going to be like. But until you live it, they don’t know.”
The match itself resembled two wrestlers who lock together and won’t allow either a chance to make a move to win. There were chances in 120 scoreless minutes of play, but they were few and neither Dietrich nor Saxons keeper Brooke Schocker were particularly busy in the match.
“It was a battle,” Vostal said. “Neither keeper had to make great saves. But you could see the fight in everybody and that’s what it’s all about.”
Even as the North Stars raced to congratulate Koehl, the reality of a season that ended sooner than they had wanted coursed through Schaumburg’s players, who returned to their bench in tears, most hugging a teammate.
“It was two teams scrapping and clawing trying to get any advantage physically and tactically,” Schaumburg coach Greg Charvat said. “It wasn’t a pretty soccer game by any imagination. But that’s how it gets at this time of the year.”
The Saxons (16-2-4) had their best chance to score in regulation time with 19 minutes left when Ben passed to Schmalz and Dietrich had to make a save when Schmalz shot. In the second overtime, Ben had a pair of shots on goal. The first was blocked and the second went narrowly over the crossbar.
But if Schaumburg did not have many shots on goal, neither did St. Charles North — and the Saxons never relented through 120 minutes either.
“Both teams wanted this game so badly,” Charvat said. “I’m sure (Vostal) would agree that a game that had to be decided on penalty kicks is a tough way to end a season. But you have to hand it to them. They were able to put those away in a high-pressure situation.”
Schaumburg graduates eight seniors from its roster.
“We lose 12 seniors including a couple of managers,” Charvat said. “This is one of our finest senior classes that we’ve ever had. It’s going to be difficult to proceed without them. They are not just classy soccer players, but they are classy kids. I’m really going to miss my seniors.”
Barrington 2, Huntley 0: Aimee Pierce stood between freshmen Jenna Szczesny and Kelsey Muniez encouraging them in their postgame interviews.
But this wasn’t a typical situation for a sectional championship team.
After all, Muniez had only played on the Barrington varsity team for a month and hadn’t scored a goal.
Szczesny has been on the Fillies’ varsity squad, but it has been the playoffs where she has started to become a constant scoring threat.
Each freshman scored goals in Barrington’s 2-0 victory over Huntley in the Class 3A Rockford Boylan sectional, giving the Fillies a fourth-straight sectional crown.
Barrington (19-5) faces St. Charles North, which defeated Schaumburg in penalty kicks, at 7 p.m. on Tuesday in the Barrington supersectional.
“Every one of the girls plays and does their job on the field,” Pierce said. “It shows how deep the program is. Jenna has done a tremendous job, especially during the playoffs.”
Muniez, who was called up from the junior varsity team on April 26th, broke a scoreless tie when she connected on a pass from Pierce with 4 minutes, 25 seconds left in the first half.
“I kept an eye on her on the jayvee team,” Barrington coach Ryan Stengren said. “The first game she started was the first time we played Boylan, and she played well. Even before she scored, she had her stamp on the game.”
Pierce dribbled up the side of the field and sent a pass to Muniez, was able to sneak the ball past Huntley goalkeeper Jessica Galason with a shot off her left foot.
“When I was going toward the goal (Galason) went to the front post, so I aimed at the back post,” she said.
Barrington took its 1-0 lead after a first half which included a 30 minute delay 14 minutes into play for a lighting storm. The Fillies gave Huntley a hard time on both ends of the break, hitting Galason up for 8 shots on goal in the first 40 minutes. Galason finished the game with 14 saves as Barrington constantly ran in a slew of players off its bench to keep the legs fresh on the field.
“We knew we had our hands full,” Red Raiders’ coach Kris Grabner said. “We wanted to stay poised and to shoot the ball. Kelly (Manczko) hit a free kick right before the break. We just didn’t capitalize in the final third.”
Kelly Manczko set up for a free kick with 26:23 left in the first half. Her hard-hit shot forced goalkeeper Hannah Luedtke to rush to the corner of the net and deflect the ball with her ball. It was one of the Red Raiders’ 2 shots in the game.
— Matt Stacionis