Another Werfel winner as Grayslake C. wins own tourney
Emily Werfel scored the game-winning goal for a second straight day as Grayslake Central shut out visiting Grant 1-0 in girls soccer on Wednesday afternoon.
The Rams captured the title of their own invitational; Grant won it last year.
While the event was held at Grayslake North the previous couple of days due to ice and snow on the Rams’ field, it was moved to its intended site Wednesday.
“We came into the season knowing that we’re young, with 18 players on the roster and 11 of them are underclassman,” said Grayslake Central coach Mike McCaulou, whose team won all three games by 1 goal. “We’re going to go through our growing pains. But it’s nice to win tight games like that, because we’re so young. The last few games defensively have been pretty solid — shutouts — and you have to applaud that.”
The Rams’ Kajal Chokshi recorded her second straight clean sheet and made 6 stops against Grant (2-1).
Grayslake Central’s defenders consisted of Savannah Mudd, Lauren Spalding, Rebecca Wollmuth and Anna Sizelove.
“Kajal feels this is it for her,” said McCaulou of Chokshi, a senior. “She’s giving it everything she has, and she’s more vocal this year than last year.”
Werfel, one of eight sophomores to start for the Rams, knocked in the winning goal in the 47th minute. Werfel beat two Grant defenders and netted the goal with an assist from Wollmuth.
“I kind of split through two players,” Werfel said. “I just go forward and I know I can go around a lot of people if I have the ball.
“I’ve done a lot of skill stuff while I was with my old club. There was a lot of space on the outside to bring the ball in (to the penalty area).”
Grant had some opportunities to score, but couldn’t finish its chances. The Bulldogs were left without getting a goal on Wednesday after scoring five times in the two previous games.
“We have to learn how to finish,” Grant coach Michael Kennedy said. “It’s something that we have to work on. We’re still ahead of schedule.
“We do have experienced finishers. In the back we’re young, and we need to come forward as a unit. That will be the key thing — communicating, and not being timid. It will come in time for us. We’ll improve in our scoring.”
Round Lake lost to Waukegan 4-1 in the third-place match Wednesday.
Bianca Mahoney scored her first goal of the season for the Panthers (0-3) in the second half.
Round Lake already has shown improvement in its first three games, scoring 4 goals.
“Our youngsters stepped up for the most part,” Round Lake coach Andres Orbe. “We’re going to have figure some things out defensively.
“Other than that, once we learned to switch the ball at the end of the half, we were attacking. We got the goal because we switched the ball. We expect some good things this season.”