Boys soccer: St. Charles East shuts out Batavia
Due to a rare scheduling quirk along with a weather-forced postponement, St. Charles East's boys soccer team had a little extra practice time in preparation for Saturday's match against Batavia.
Apparently, the long practice week paid off.
Senior Jasminko Dizdarevic scored the game's only goal with 12:16 remaining while the defense limited the Bulldogs (4-4-2, 0-1-1) to just 2 shots on net during the Saints' 1-0 Upstate Eight Conference River Division triumph in Batavia.
"We've had a great week of practice," said Saints coach Paul Jennison, whose team has won 3 straight games after starting the season with a 1-3-1 mark. "(Friday) was our best practice of the year.
"I knew from the way we practiced (Friday) that we'd get a good result today. We've come through a wee bit of adversity early and we're starting to put the positives back in motion."
Some of those positives included peppering Bulldogs goalkeeper Jimmy Perreault with 18 shots, including Dizdarevic's first game-winning goal of the season.
Attempting to find hard-charging junior forward Justin Stepien with a crossing feed, Dizdarevic instead found the ball back on his right foot after a fortunate deflection off Batavia defender Trevor Hockings.
"A throw-in ball came in and Justin (Stepien) was calling for it so I tried finding him," said Dizdarevic, who now has 3 goals for the season. "The ball came right back to me. I saw the goalie (Perrault) diving to his left so I decided to go near post. Just a little bit of room is all you need to score goals.
"It felt great, plus it's a conference game and we needed a victory."
"It's a striker's mentality," said Jennison. "If you're 18 yards or in, I don't expect you to pass the ball. He did exactly what we want him to do. We want our center forwards to be ruthless in front of the goal. Luckily, we were on the right side of it."
Jennison felt his team played better as the match rolled along.
"In the second half, we definitely got into more of a rhythm," said the coach. "In the first half, we weren't connecting on passes and we were playing into their strengths.
"We made a couple adjustments in player personnel switches at halftime and I think we did a much better job of closing the gap centrally."
One of those switches included moving 6-2, 190-pound junior defender Mitch Lucatorto up to midfield.
"We recognized that he was stepping up from the back really well with the ball," said Jennison. "We thought he could obviously be a greater threat when he was there (midfield)."
One of the Bulldogs' bright spots included a sprawling save by backup keeper Charlie Marston, forced into action for a couple minutes after Perreault drew a yellow card early in the second half.
"That kept us right in the game," said Bulldogs coach Mark Gianfrancesco. "It was a great hit (by the Saints' Chris Edgerton). If he (Marston) didn't save it, it's going right in the back of the net."