Girls soccer: Naperville Central tops Benet on Conforti goal

Naperville Central senior Kathleen Conforti took the only shot that would also find the back of the net during Saturday morning's Naperville Invitational game against Benet.

In doing so she also sent birthday wishes to her father, Henry, while sending her girls soccer team into the tournament quarterfinals with a 1-0 victory in Naperville.

"It was a great cross (from Kirsten Dorgan), a perfect cross," Conforti said of her goal, which came with 6:45 remaining in the first half. "Ryan (Dudycha) was at near post and taking a defender away so it was wide open."

Dorgan sprinted downfield and received the ball before sending in the cross.

"I received the ball and just looked up," Dorgan said. "In practice this week we were working on trying to swing the ball in and hope that someone would get a touch in on it, anything to get it in the net."

Naperville Central (8-3-3) had some opportunities to add to its lead but came up empty-handed. The Redhawks were whistled for being offsides on a nice possession from Kayla Burke to Julia Irle to Conforti late in the second half, while their other chances were either off the mark or snagged by Benet junior goalkeeper Anna Keefe.

"Anna was outstanding and she needed to be," Benet coach Bob Gros said. "She was shaky (on Friday), but she came back big and strong."

Benet (6-3-1) was coming off a 3-0 loss to Oswego, but Gros felt the Redwings played far better Saturday.

"I thought we played a good, solid game," he said. "I'm not disappointed with the way we played. They're a good team and we had a solid performance."

Fielding a young team, Gros expects mixed results, especially during busy weeks such as this one and next week.

"You could see that sometimes our youthful exuberance got in our way," he said. "But I'm very pleased with they effort they put in."

After a tough DuPage Valley Conference loss to Wheaton Warrenville South on Tuesday, the Redhawks have bounced back to shut out Oswego and Benet.

"After the loss on Tuesday night I told the girls that I thought that there were too many of us that played poorly," Redhawks coach Ed Watson said. "No one played poorly for us (on Saturday). Collectively, we were slow to start, but I'd say at about the 15-minute mark on we started to do some nice pieces of the game."

It was Naperville Central's third 1-0 win in its past five games.

"I was very pleased with Conforti's play," Watson said. "Madison Redeker off the bench played great and (Kayla) Rowan and Kirsten (Dorgan) won balls for us."