Finn’s goal carries Jacobs to regional crown
At this time last year Kenny Finn was running for the Jacobs’ cross country team.
This season, Finn is scoring the winning goal in the boys soccer regional championship game.
Finn’s goal off a perfect pass from Erik Soto with 27:12 remaining in the match, gave the third-seeded Golden Eagles a 1-0 win over District 300 rival and fourth-seeded Dundee-Crown in the Class 3A Jacobs regional championship held in Algonquin Saturday night.
Jacobs avenged a 3-1 loss to D-C earlier in the season in Fox Valley Conference Valley Division play.
The Golden Eagles (11-11) will play Rockford Boylan at the Barrington sectional on Wednesday.
“I played soccer in seventh grade and came to the regional championship match last season and really wanted to play this season,” said Finn. “It has been a lot of fun. Coach (AJ) Cappello said to crash the net and Erik came me a perfect pass.”
Cappello was pleased to see Finn decide to play soccer.
“Kenny has played very well,” said Cappello. “He was in the right place at the right time on the goal.”
Cappello used the earlier loss to D-C as a motivator.
“We didn’t play well in the first match against D-C,” said Cappello. “We came out tonight and played aggressively and played very physical. We beat a very good D-C team.”
The Golden Eagles got a great effort from junior goalkeeper Nick Matysyk. The Jacobs goalkeeper had 4 saves including 2 spectacular saves on Dundee-Crown standout Kyle Hagan. On both instances, Hagan broke through the Jacobs defense and had a breakaway shot on Matysyk. Both times the junior goalie made the save.
“I was concentrating on stopping Hagan because he got one
on me the last game,” said Matysyk. “He is a very good player and I wanted to make sure he didn’t score one on me. We are getting hot at the right time. We got redemption against Huntley Wednesday and got redemption against Dundee-Crown tonight.
Dundee-Crown (9-10-3), which did rifle 7 shots on Matysyk, couldn’t get the ball past the stingy junior.
“We didn’t play well at all and we didn’t stick to the game plan.,” said Dundee-Crown coach Rey Vargas. “I am very disappointed with the way we played. We decided to play kick ball and we didn’t win the 50-50 balls. “