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Girls soccer: Geneva's Owens takes milestone win in stride

Last Tuesday's 7-0 victory over Larkin was a benchmark for Geneva girls soccer coach Megan Owens. She registered her 100th victory at the school in her eighth season but it wasn't something the team knew much about.

"I didn't even tell them about it ahead of time, it was kind of a private accomplishment," Owens said. "I wasn't even aware until one of the reporters informed me it was coming up this season."

Owens wants the focus to be on what got her there.

"You dedicate a lot of time and effort to the program and it's a nice reflection of all the teams and alumni you coached that have gone through the program. They're the ones that earned it, I'm just at the helm, so to speak."

The Vikings' offense, behind sisters Kyleigh (16 goals) and Jenna Dominguez and Maddy Rapach-Lagowski, certainly has turned heads as Geneva sits at 10-2-1, 2-0 in the UEC River (through Wednesday) with the No. 3 seed in the Class 3A Bartlett sectional.

The offense wasn't the question mark so much as the defense was. Not anymore. Keeper Emma Harkleroad is healthy this season after a broken collarbone suffered against Larkin last year and a back line of Leah Groven, Briar Schwardt, Emily Hauser and Maddie Parise has helped give Geneva 8 shutouts and 7 goals allowed, 3 of which came in a lost to St. Charles East on April 9.

"Emma's been a huge factor this year; she's come up big for us in games this year and our defense has really stepped up to get the job done," Owens said.

Going "North": In what could've been a difficult transition year from longtime coach Ruth Vostal to rookie Brian Harks hasn't been so: St. Charles North is tied with Geneva at 2-0 in the UEC River to go with its 11-2 overall record and the top seed in the Bartlett sectional. So what's Harks' secret besides inheriting good talent?

"We've really tried to build upon tradition and spend some time defining what St. Charles North soccer is," Harks said. "Protect the past and promote the future. We've really drawn in from the past and found what works and tried to build upon that."

Getting a big win against rival St. Charles East on April 19 certainly helped, let alone the fact that Harks attributes the girls' success to their practice regimen. It also helps that there's a different hero every night. To start it was Gia Wahlberg and Hailey Rydberg while Rydberg and Elli Wahlberg gave life to the midfield toward the middle of the season. Lately it's been the backliners, Lauren Willis and Lauren Neslund, as well as Sami Sample's 6 shutouts in goal.

"It's exciting because you never know in which game which person is going to step up. Morgan Rerko had 2 goals in a 2-0 win against CL South and she had been struggling to find the back of the net," Harks said. "Sample's been doing really well between the pipes and come up with some big saves, notably a PK save in a 1-goal game against New Trier."

Bartlett buying in: Don't think a PepsiCo Showdown loss to Huntley in PKs for the Gatorade Bracket championship on Sunday slowed Bartlett down.

"The positives we can take away from it is playing in a high-level game with a high-pressure scenario, playing overtime and penalties that our conference doesn't allow us to do," said Hawks coach Vince Di Nuzzo, whose team earned a No. 5 seed in its own sectional. "It gives us that playoff exposure and that experience that we wouldn't get until the playoffs."

The Hawks have can eclipse last year's mark of 12 wins with their next victory. Di Nuzzo's defend-first approach, keeping games low scoring and tight has instilled the right confidence in the girls.

"Once they believe in each other and believe that they're capable - I think them seeing the boys succeed made them realize that for some reason even though they're not really correlated, that kind of helped them," Di Nuzzo added. "It's just confidence with this girls group. They needed confidence and once they did they started getting the results."

Senior mid Mariela Alba has excelled in the new system with 2 goals and 20 assists. She earned the Buddy Helpers' Off The Field Performance Award at PepsiCo along with a new laptop for work she does for Bartlett High and the community.

"It shows in her field performance," Di Nuzzo said. "I've never seen someone get an assist and go congratulate the scorer as much as she does. Even if she not involved in the goal she's equally happy, she's just a happy good kid, fun to be around and fun to coach."

Good Knights: Of the 13 wins Kaneland has on the season, all are shutouts. The Knights have given up 5 goals in 17 games and senior goalkeeper Emily Chapman has 43 shutouts in her 3 years on varsity.

"That's a lot of games where she hasn't given up goals," Knights coach Scott Parillo said. "She's a stud. She's good, she's really good."

To her aid, Taylor Zitkus, Rachael Lutter, Nicole Koczka and Taylor Emigh have played at a high level in the back, although Parillo acknowledges the entire team defensive game is solid, which helps an offense with an array of goal scorers.

"The kids just don't give up a lot of goals, they just don't," he said. "They seem to play well together. When they get into trouble they seem to clear it out and the other team has the ball we try to press as much as possible and get it back, that's been the key."

Can the Knights handle adversity if they do go down a goal at some point? Parillo is eager to see with that a possibility in the playoffs. But the Knights still find themselves on the outside in a stacked Northern Illinois Big XII East with 1 loss and 1 tie. According to Parillo's old school verbiage, the conference is full of "slobberknockers and grind out games."

The Knights will look for some revenge Tuesday against Sycamore, which defeated them 2-0 on April 9. Kaneland earned a No. 2 seed behind Sycamore in sub-sectional B of the Class 2A DeKalb sectional.

The grass is greener on the other side: The St. Edward girls soccer team was the first to christen the new grass surface on Greg True Field and the Wave are 3-1-1 on the green that also hosted their annual Green Wave tournament last weekend that Streamwood won.

"It's one of those things, something good came out of something bad," Green Wave coach Tim Brieger said.

Gone are the funny hops and the dirt patches in the field that now features a mix of bluegrass and a bunch of alums jealous of the new surface. "The kids coming in - football and soccer - won't understand. On a day it rained it didn't just smell, it just had that old dirt smell," Brieger said. "You could tell (this weekend) there was a tournament on the new grass but even in the goal mounts you couldn't see worn out areas. In the past the old grass it would get beaten up in the middle. Once they cut the grass after the tournament this past weekend, it looks like it was unused."

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