Boys soccer: Saints celebrate 1,000th match with win
Go ahead and have a great night St. Charles East.
The Saints celebrated Senior Night in fine fashion during Thursday's DuKane Conference finale against Wheaton Warrenville South, earning a 4-2 victory in the program's 1,000th match.
St. Charles East, who had already clinched the conference championship, improved to 689-212-99 overall in its 40th season.
The Saints also finished the regular season 17-1-3 and 6-0-1 in the DuKane Conference. Their lone loss was 1-0 decision to Metea Valley in the St. Charles Invite on Sept. 4.
"The idea was to rest some guys and get healthy since there were no implications on the playoffs," said Saints coach Vince DiNuzzo. "But it had implications for us on momentum and I feel like we wanted to continue our momentum, and that message that we have to prepare for every opportunity regardless of the situation. I think we took them seriously and it was nice to finish the season with a win."
A couple of fouls in the box awarded the Saints penalty kicks in the opening half and sophomore Sebastian Carranza and senior Tyler Filbert converted them.
Junior Jake Maslowski had put the Saints ahead with 27:29 left in the first half, but the Tigers drew even at 1-1 on a Connor Shrigley goal midway through the half.
Senior Zach Gamster also finished a shot from Sam Wade with 10:16 remaining in the half. It came between the two penalty kicks as the Saints enjoyed a comfortable 4-1 advantage at halftime, despite taking it easy with its regulars, mixing up the lineup knowing they had already won the DuKane title, as well as eyeing a potential rematch with the Tigers in less than a week.
"This was a great night and we couldn't have had a better group of seniors to play with in terms of leadership and talent," Wade said. "Throughout the season we've had a lot of injuries and adversity and stuff, but this group of guys is the reason why we persisted through with the record we have, so coming out on top was important. We already had conference secured but winning was symbolic, and we got a lot of seniors in the game too."
Wheaton Warrenville South (7-9-2, 2-6) was able to keep the Saints off the scoreboard in the second half, while cutting its deficit in half with 14:23 remaining when sophomore Christian Munoz found the back of the net.
"I do like what we saw in the second half," Tigers coach Guy Callipari said. "I thought our technical players played with a little bit of common sense and understanding, and having learned from the first half, learned how to play where the spaces were and we did a good job of finding those spaces."
The Tigers have to quickly turn their attention to Saturday's regional quarterfinal as they will host Willowbrook on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. With a victory they will get to play the Saints again in a regional semifinal at Lake Park on Wednesday.
"I suspect Willowbrook has nothing to lose either and is going to be coming in and playing in the same format where everyone is one and done," Callipari said. "We'll put our best foot forward and hope we establish something positive, especially like in the last 40 minutes here."