Girls soccer: Glenbard East tops South Elgin, wins league title

Glenbard East's girls soccer program is calling itself something different today.

Conference champion.

The Rams clinched the Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division on Tuesday with a 1-0 victory against visiting South Elgin (9-8-2, 2-2).

"All day on my mind was, we have to win this, we have to win this," Rams senior Brittany Paganucci said. "You'd hear people talking around school saying, you guys are going to win a conference championship. This is something special for me and the whole team."

"I think there's a lot of energy since this is the first one ever in program history," added Rams junior Dana Plotke. "We were just like, we have to get this."

Paganucci scored the game's only goal in the 18th minute, and the Storm made her work for a while in the penalty area just to get a shot off.

"It took a little while," Paganucci said. "It was very confusing. I'd try and cut but then a girl would stop and hit it. Then I'd try and lay it off to Elizabeth (Toledo) and then she'd try to kick and it would bounce off another girl. It was a very awkward goal, but a goal is a goal."

"We know Paganucci," added Storm coach Tiffany Disher. "She's a great player. She's obviously their best player, their go-to player, who they're looking for as their target. So for us it was someone that we wanted to mark, and on that play there we had three defenders come in and she basically slid one in on us. We were very happy with being able to stop her from getting more opportunities. Those little bitty mistakes are what caused the 1-0 game today."

It was Paganucci's 28th goal of the season.

"She's been doing it all year," Rams coach Kent Overbey said. "Just the cutback. She's dangerous. And it really is sheer determination, just the will to stay with it and get pushed and keep working and just keep hacking at it. And frankly she's done it for four years. She's scored 74 goals for us, and there might have been prettier ones than that, but probably not a bigger one in terms of a conference championship."

The Rams (17-4, 5-0) tied the school's all-time single-season wins record and added to their school shutout record with their 14th of the season.

The Rams impressed Disher with how they've improved.

"From last year to this year I like that last year they played a little bit more of a dump-and-chase game and this year it took me by surprise because I thought they might do it again," she said. "But they actually worked the ball through some players and through the middle. They play at an intense level and they're a solid program."

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