Boys soccer: Streamwood's 3 2nd-half goals sink South Elgin

Teams don't normally score goals in bunches and only select players are able to somersault backwards and move their leg in a pedaling motion to put their team on the scoreboard.

Streamwood sophomore Aaron Taboada fired up the small crowd with his bicycle kick goal and the Sabres added two more goals in the next four minutes to rally twice before pulling ahead of Upstate Eight rival South Elgin, 3-2 at Millennium Field.

"I saw it coming and I was like this is perfect and I just took the chance," Toboada said of his goal that tied the game at 1-1 with 23:41 left to play. "I took it and I saw it go in and I was like 'Yeah! It's a goal!'"

Much like a dunk on the hardwood, Taboada's goal didn't count more than any other goal, but it really seemed to fire up the Sabres.

"It boosted everybody's confidence up, it kept my team up, it kept us going, definitely," he said. "The crowd was growing wild. It changed the game."

South Elgin (2-3-1, 1-2-0) stopped the celebration by pulling ahead on a goal from Christopher Coria just a little more than two minutes later, but exactly a minute after that, Streamwood (5-3-3, 1-2-3) answered with an Anthony Caldera goal to make it 2-2 with 20:27 still to play.

Then, just 51 seconds later, Streamwood took its first lead of the night when Aldo Jimenez was able to take advantage of an opportunity from in close.

"I just saw the ball there and it was kind of messy and I just shot it," he said. "I saw it and had to shoot second post and the keeper wasn't getting it so I just shot it."

It was just Jimenez's second goal of the year, but easily his biggest as it gave the Sabres their long-awaited first conference victory. "I think the second half we just had more energy than them," he said. "We kept attacking and attacking and we just scored."

All in a bunch.

"I'm just glad that we finished the way we finished and that's one thing we really worked on in practice yesterday," Streamwood coach Matt Polovin said "Situational finishing the game. You got the lead, you've got to protect the lead."

South Elgin enjoyed a 1-0 lead at halftime after sophomore Kendall Andrewin was opportunistic, pouncing on a ball that Streamwood goalkeeper Harvey Partida had knocked away off a set piece.

"Maybe growing pains, maybe we're still kind of feeling the jet lag our little two-week pause, but for most part I thought we played well," Storm coach Jerzy Skowron said. "We let them have the possession and I think we were the more dominant team in the second half of that first half but I think they got that first goal and I think we kind of started to deflate a little bit."