Wheaton Academy rises to the task, ousts St. Francis

Wheaton Academy felt it hadn't played very well the first time it met St. Francis this season.

On Friday the Warriors proved their point.

Defending Class 2A champion Wheaton Academy defeated archrival St. Francis 4-0 to win the Elmwood Park sectional championship and advance to Tuesday's 4:30 p.m. Benedictine University supersectional against the winner of Saturday's Nazareth-University High match.

When St. Francis (15-9-1) and Wheaton Academy (18-3-1) met in a Suburban Christian Conference game three weeks ago, they tied at 1 before the Warriors won a shootout 5-4.

"We came out a little flat the last game, but today we were ready and we knew they would come out hard and we had to come out a little harder," Warriors senior Christi Dithrich said.

Wheaton Academy had a little bit of a slow start again, but it didn't last long. In the 13th minute a Crystal Thomas through ball found Ally Witt breaking behind the St. Francis back line. Her shot hit the right post and bounced in.

"The first 5-10 minutes we were in it and once again it looked like it was going to be a game," Spartans coach Meghan Boler said. "Then the first goal came, then the second goal and the third."

The Thomas-to-Witt combination worked again in the 35th minute, this time Thomas taking a free kick and finding Witt for the one-touch goal.

The Warriors scored again two minutes later when senior Alexa Sharkey fed classmate Kristen Wittmuss for the goal.

"I don't know if it was the pressure, playing Wheaton Academy in a sectional final game," Boler said of her team's performance. "I don't know if they didn't sleep the night before. I don't know what it was."

The Warriors put the game away in the 49th minute when Witt flicked a Dithrich free kick to senior Meghan Grant, who slid the ball into the net.

"It was how we expected to perform today," Wheaton Academy coach Scott Marksberry said. "We came out and did exactly what we wanted to do. We drew up a pretty defined but simple game plan yesterday and stuck to it."

Part of the plan was to man-mark the St. Francis forwards.

"It was really the outside backs that did most of it," Dithrich said of juniors Kerrin Clancy and Lindsey Burke. "They were man-marking today, which was new for them. But they did great."