St. Charles East starts fast, beats Batavia
Creation has never been a problem this year for St. Charles East’s girls soccer team. Where there have been occasional struggles has been in finishing — conversion of chances into goals.
So you can imagine the happiness the Saints felt in the opening 10 minutes of the second half of Saturday’s match with Batavia — on the afternoon before Prom — when Liana Imbrogno and Ellie Sterner set their teammates dancing with strikes that earned a 2-0 Upstate Eight Conference River victory over the visiting Bulldogs.
Saturday’s game marked the third time these two longtime rivals tried to play. Originally scheduled for April 25, bad weather forced a rescheduling, as did poor weather on May 14.
“It was good for them that they put two away straight away at the start of the second half,” St. Charles East coach Paul Jennison said. “It was nice to see that because it gave them a little bit of confidence.”
Sophomore Imbrogno’s goal was her second varsity goal since moving up from the junior varsity in mid-season.
“That’s great for her,” Jennison said. “She came up halfway through the year. She’s got good pace and she arrives in the box and what more can you ask than for her to get on the end of crosses.”
Sterner, a junior, has been one of the Saints’ (8-8-3) main offensive threats this year.
“She’s got the ability to change the game,” Jennison said. “It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, like today, that can be the difference between teams.”
Through the first 40 minutes, the Saints repeated sent passes from midfield into the “channels” — the area between the wings and the absolute center of the penalty area. Players ran onto those passes and sent the ball to the opposite post. The movement stretched Batavia’s defense even though the final ball failed to find the back of the net.
“That’s been the same every game this season,” Jennison said. “I really do believe we’ve had the majority of chances in the games that we’ve played. It’s just been a matter of finishing it off.”
That same movement helped create the spaces from which the Saints scored their two quick second-half strikes.
“We like to get it out wide and back into the box,” Jennison said. “It was nice to get a finish off that. We had two good goals today and we’re certainly happy with the win.”
Batavia (8-7-1) closed the regular season struggling to apply the kind of finishing touch that St. Charles East found on Saturday.
“At times, we play under control and play a passing game and a possession game and we play pretty well,” Batavia coach Jim McAlpin said. “We were hoping in the second half that we could hold the ball a little better, posses and have some opportunities.”
After holding the Saints at-bay despite defending in their half much of the first half, Batavia was knocked backward by those two strikes and only rarely threatened in the final half-hour to score.
“They’re a good team,” McAlpin said. “They’ve got some nice players. We’re struggling to get good shots on goal and in possessing the ball and doing what we do best.”