Boys soccer: Koenig, Naperville North stay perfect in DVC
Naperville North senior forward Patrick Koenig decided the time was right to heed his boys soccer coach's pleas to shoot more from distance.
"Coach usually tells me that if I can turn and shoot from pretty far distance, I can," Koenig said of coach Jim Konrad.
In the 11th minute Tuesday night against Neuqua Valley, Koenig saw his opportunity. With a defender on his back, the soccer ball bounced to Koenig about 20 yards from the Wildcats' net. He spun and flicked the ball with the outside of his right boot, chipping it over the goalkeeper and into the net.
The goal gave the Huskies a 1-0 victory in Naperville.
"Basically the ball came in to me," Koenig said. "I turned the kid. It was bouncing a little bit. I saw the goalie off his line and I just tried to hit it back post over him."
"The nice thing about Patrick, Patrick can strike the ball in so many ways," Konrad said. "He's got such a smooth stroke. He's dangerous from all over, and I'm actually on him, saying, 'Hey, any time you have a touch, have a shot,' because he hits such a heavy ball. And that was just a kid being strong enough to hold a guy off, get his head up and then just put it to the back post, and it dropped in perfect.
"That was a goal scorer's goal."
If Neuqua Valley had to lose, that was the kind of goal the Wildcats could accept with a shrug.
"I don't care who the keeper is back there, he's not going to get to it," Neuqua Valley coach Arnoldo Gonzalez said. "He's not going to get to it. And that's what I'm saying. You lose a game on a great goal like that, there's nothing you can do. There's goals and then there's stuff like that."
Though the Huskies had a distinct edge in possession and outshot the Wildcats 14-2, the Neuqua Valley defense held firm the rest of the game.
"We were breaking them down at times. We just couldn't get one in. We had a lot of restarts, we had a lot of chances, we just couldn't get one in the back of the net," Koenig said.
"They did a real nice job of defending us," Konrad added.
The Wildcats (2-10-5, 0-4-1 DuPage Valley Conference) have struggled much of the season, but Gonzalez liked what he saw despite the loss.
"I'm not surprised with the way we played because we've been actually playing this type of soccer maybe the last four or five games," Gonzalez said. "So it's a very good thing to see at this point of the season, something we've been struggling with."
The three-time defending Class 3A champion Huskies, however, don't feel they've quite peaked. With the state playoffs just a week away, they still are experimenting with formations and personnel.
"We've still got to get better," Konrad said. "We've got a lot a long ways to go before we're in state tournament form. We've got one game left (Thursday at Downers Grove South) and then a few days off and then we start rolling. So we definitely have to catch up, (get up) to speed. We're not quite there."
The Huskies (14-4-2, 5-0) completed the DVC season undefeated, having already clinched their 27th league championship.