Huskies put the bite on wounded Tigers
Dandridge, Boswell help Naperville N. top Wheaton Warrenville S.
By Matt Le Cren
NAPERVILLE – Naperville North could have been forgiven for looking past Wheaton Warrenville South on Tuesday night.
After all, the Huskies were coming off a brilliant performance in winning the Naperville Invitational and had the added distraction of Senior Night festivities.
Much to Wheaton Warrenville South’s chagrin, the host Huskies never lost their focus and continued their impressive play with a dominant 4-0 DuPage Valley Conference victory.
Senior Abbie Boswell and junior Alexis Dandridge each had two goals – for Dandridge her first two-goal outing – as the Huskies overwhelmed the injury-riddled Tigers from start to finish.
Naperville North (13-1, 3-0) outshot the Tigers 13-0 in the first half and 23-3 overall as sophomore goalie Elizabeth Cablk was called on to make only one save. Cablk now has two shutouts in as many games while subbing for injured senior Fiona Baenziger.
“Our focus now is to keep our performance high, so we’re focused on coming into every game with high energy and being technical on the ball,” Dandridge said. “We want to outwork every team we play because by outworking every team everything else kind of falls into place.”
Dandridge opened the scoring at the 36:23 mark of the first half, receiving a long ball from Morgan Krause and running into the Wheaton Warrenville South box against two defenders. The muscular forward bumped a defender off the ball and lofted a shot over Tigers goalie Nell Rosenthal and inside the right post.
The goal resembled the kind of play that Boswell has made so many times over the past four years.
“It was like a typical Boz goal,” Dandridge said with a smile. “I actually don’t really know (how I did it). I kind of put my body against the defender and I just tried to get a touch over the goalie. It just ended up going in my favor.”
It became apparent this game would go in Naperville North’s favor when Dandridge struck again six minutes later. The Huskies began to overwhelm the Tigers’ defense with constant pressure.
Boswell sent a pass into the left side of the box to Maddie Krejci, whose centering pass found Dandridge in a crowd for a short finish and a 2-0 lead. That eased any concerns Naperville North coach Steve Goletz had about his squad letting down against the Tigers (9-7, 2-2), who dressed only 15 players because of injuries.
“We talked about that in the pre-game,” Goletz said. “Obviously Wheaton South is a great program historically. Guy (Callipari) does such a great job with them, and I told the kids that on paper, (the Tigers) are not the No. 1 team in the state, they’re not the No. 2 team in state, but I challenged them to see how they would come out.
“Our first goal every year is to win the DVC, and if they slip up tonight and they don’t show up and they overlook Wheaton South, which is a good team, obviously you’re going to set yourself up for not controlling your own destiny.”
But the Huskies do control their own destiny heading into Thursday night’s game at Wheaton North (11-2-3, 2-0-1), the only team who can deny them their fourth straight DVC title.
“Lex putting two in early definitely helped,” Goletz said. “It was Senior Night, and it was great to be able to celebrate our seniors and what they’ve meant to our program. I think the underclassmen were so happy to be able to give them a shutout win tonight in convincing fashion.”
The victory was the 13th straight for the Huskies, who also posted their 10th shutout and showed no sign of taking their feet off the gas pedal.
“I think that coming off of this past weekend, we kind of wanted the intensity to stay up,” said Dandridge, the Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match. “Coach always says we can do great things this year, so we’re just working to please our coach and tonight we played for our seniors because it’s our last home game. We needed to get a convincing win so we can get all our players to get some minutes in.”
The Tigers have had no problem getting playing time for everybody, but it has been out of necessity. Injuries have decimated the roster. Junior Erin Madigan, one of the team’s best attacking players, is out for the season with a quadriceps injury, and several other starters are either out or playing in pain.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Callipari said. “Nobody is complaining of not enough playing time. I think it’s the first time I’ve actually had the kids go, ‘Can I come off?’
“We have a lot of kids who, God bless them, are playing through pain and they shouldn’t have to, but we are just not that deep. We only rostered 18 and our JV team is in the same situation.
“But they gutted it through, and credit to Naperville North. They are a machine at this point in time and as simple as the tactics may be, they do it very well.
“We cannot play that way. We’re not that type of team. We don’t have that kind of pace, so we needed to hold the ball a lot longer and not feel the pressure.”
But Boswell, Dandridge and midfielders Olivia Stapleton and Allison Svoboda made the Tigers feel constant pressure. The visitors rarely got the ball out of their own end in the first half, which ended with the Huskies up 3-0 thanks to Boswell’s 13th goal of the season.
Boswell added her 14th with 26:05 to go in the second half off an assist from Emily Wilhelm. She could have had more but hit the inside of the right post on a breakaway in the fifth minute and saw Rosenthal stop her power header on a rebound of a free kick from Morgan Krause that hit the crossbar.
“That was so sad,” Boswell said of her breakaway miss. “I always end up missing the easy shots and making the hard shots.
“I’m so proud of our performance. I’m just really proud that we didn’t have any letdowns. We’ve been playing some really hard teams lately I’m just so glad that we’re not getting complacent.”
Rosenthal had no time to be complacent. She and her teammates were under siege for long stretches. The junior made nine saves in an admirable effort to keep her team in the game, but the Huskies succeeded in breaking down the defense.
“That’s what you’re going to find,” Callipari said. “They’ve got a great working midfield and there is a physicality there to win the ball and then to feed their front-runners.
“They isolate the one-on-one on a high line and they are just threatening you to try to defend. You know it is coming but you’ve still got to be able to defend it with numbers, and it’s just difficult to do all day long.”
Wheaton Warrenville South senior Tori Adomshick was impressed with the Huskies.
“I think that they were just capitalizing on all of our mistakes, like every bad pass they made sure they got the ball and they were capitalizing on their chances,” Adomshick said. “Even though we were really fighting, I just thought that wasn’t good enough today. We needed to be cleaner and make the most of our chances.”
Starting lineups
Wheaton Warrenville South
GK: Nell Rosenthal
D: Allie Harvey
D: Rachel Conrady
D: Shannon Erhardt
D: Ava Fickle
D: Kelly Kern
M: Julia Martz
M: Sarah Burns
M: Tori Adomshick
F: Anna Fank
F: Alexis Jakuszewski
Naperville North
GK: Elizabeth Cablk
D: Morgan Krause
D: Jen Fortman
D: Emily Wilhelm
D: Breanne Mullins
M: Claire Hilburger
M: Maddie Krejci
M: Olivia Stapleton
M: Allison Svoboda
F: Abbie Boswell
F: Alexis Dandridge
MVP of the Match: Alexis Dandridge, Naperville North
Dandridge, Boswell help Naperville N. top Wheaton Warrenville S.
By Matt Le Cren
NAPERVILLE – Naperville North could have been forgiven for looking past Wheaton Warrenville South on Tuesday night.
After all, the Huskies were coming off a brilliant performance in winning the Naperville Invitational and had the added distraction of Senior Night festivities.
Much to Wheaton Warrenville South’s chagrin, the host Huskies never lost their focus and continued their impressive play with a dominant 4-0 DuPage Valley Conference victory.
Senior Abbie Boswell and junior Alexis Dandridge each had two goals – for Dandridge her first two-goal outing – as the Huskies overwhelmed the injury-riddled Tigers from start to finish.
Naperville North (13-1, 3-0) outshot the Tigers 13-0 in the first half and 23-3 overall as sophomore goalie Elizabeth Cablk was called on to make only one save. Cablk now has two shutouts in as many games while subbing for injured senior Fiona Baenziger.
“Our focus now is to keep our performance high, so we’re focused on coming into every game with high energy and being technical on the ball,” Dandridge said. “We want to outwork every team we play because by outworking every team everything else kind of falls into place.”
Dandridge opened the scoring at the 36:23 mark of the first half, receiving a long ball from Morgan Krause and running into the Wheaton Warrenville South box against two defenders. The muscular forward bumped a defender off the ball and lofted a shot over Tigers goalie Nell Rosenthal and inside the right post.
The goal resembled the kind of play that Boswell has made so many times over the past four years.
“It was like a typical Boz goal,” Dandridge said with a smile. “I actually don’t really know (how I did it). I kind of put my body against the defender and I just tried to get a touch over the goalie. It just ended up going in my favor.”
It became apparent this game would go in Naperville North’s favor when Dandridge struck again six minutes later. The Huskies began to overwhelm the Tigers’ defense with constant pressure.
Boswell sent a pass into the left side of the box to Maddie Krejci, whose centering pass found Dandridge in a crowd for a short finish and a 2-0 lead. That eased any concerns Naperville North coach Steve Goletz had about his squad letting down against the Tigers (9-7, 2-2), who dressed only 15 players because of injuries.
“We talked about that in the pre-game,” Goletz said. “Obviously Wheaton South is a great program historically. Guy (Callipari) does such a great job with them, and I told the kids that on paper, (the Tigers) are not the No. 1 team in the state, they’re not the No. 2 team in state, but I challenged them to see how they would come out.
“Our first goal every year is to win the DVC, and if they slip up tonight and they don’t show up and they overlook Wheaton South, which is a good team, obviously you’re going to set yourself up for not controlling your own destiny.”
But the Huskies do control their own destiny heading into Thursday night’s game at Wheaton North (11-2-3, 2-0-1), the only team who can deny them their fourth straight DVC title.
“Lex putting two in early definitely helped,” Goletz said. “It was Senior Night, and it was great to be able to celebrate our seniors and what they’ve meant to our program. I think the underclassmen were so happy to be able to give them a shutout win tonight in convincing fashion.”
The victory was the 13th straight for the Huskies, who also posted their 10th shutout and showed no sign of taking their feet off the gas pedal.
“I think that coming off of this past weekend, we kind of wanted the intensity to stay up,” said Dandridge, the Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match. “Coach always says we can do great things this year, so we’re just working to please our coach and tonight we played for our seniors because it’s our last home game. We needed to get a convincing win so we can get all our players to get some minutes in.”
The Tigers have had no problem getting playing time for everybody, but it has been out of necessity. Injuries have decimated the roster. Junior Erin Madigan, one of the team’s best attacking players, is out for the season with a quadriceps injury, and several other starters are either out or playing in pain.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Callipari said. “Nobody is complaining of not enough playing time. I think it’s the first time I’ve actually had the kids go, ‘Can I come off?’
“We have a lot of kids who, God bless them, are playing through pain and they shouldn’t have to, but we are just not that deep. We only rostered 18 and our JV team is in the same situation.
“But they gutted it through, and credit to Naperville North. They are a machine at this point in time and as simple as the tactics may be, they do it very well.
“We cannot play that way. We’re not that type of team. We don’t have that kind of pace, so we needed to hold the ball a lot longer and not feel the pressure.”
But Boswell, Dandridge and midfielders Olivia Stapleton and Allison Svoboda made the Tigers feel constant pressure. The visitors rarely got the ball out of their own end in the first half, which ended with the Huskies up 3-0 thanks to Boswell’s 13th goal of the season.
Boswell added her 14th with 26:05 to go in the second half off an assist from Emily Wilhelm. She could have had more but hit the inside of the right post on a breakaway in the fifth minute and saw Rosenthal stop her power header on a rebound of a free kick from Morgan Krause that hit the crossbar.
“That was so sad,” Boswell said of her breakaway miss. “I always end up missing the easy shots and making the hard shots.
“I’m so proud of our performance. I’m just really proud that we didn’t have any letdowns. We’ve been playing some really hard teams lately I’m just so glad that we’re not getting complacent.”
Rosenthal had no time to be complacent. She and her teammates were under siege for long stretches. The junior made nine saves in an admirable effort to keep her team in the game, but the Huskies succeeded in breaking down the defense.
“That’s what you’re going to find,” Callipari said. “They’ve got a great working midfield and there is a physicality there to win the ball and then to feed their front-runners.
“They isolate the one-on-one on a high line and they are just threatening you to try to defend. You know it is coming but you’ve still got to be able to defend it with numbers, and it’s just difficult to do all day long.”
Wheaton Warrenville South senior Tori Adomshick was impressed with the Huskies.
“I think that they were just capitalizing on all of our mistakes, like every bad pass they made sure they got the ball and they were capitalizing on their chances,” Adomshick said. “Even though we were really fighting, I just thought that wasn’t good enough today. We needed to be cleaner and make the most of our chances.”
Starting lineups
Wheaton Warrenville South
GK: Nell Rosenthal
D: Allie Harvey
D: Rachel Conrady
D: Shannon Erhardt
D: Ava Fickle
D: Kelly Kern
M: Julia Martz
M: Sarah Burns
M: Tori Adomshick
F: Anna Fank
F: Alexis Jakuszewski
Naperville North
GK: Elizabeth Cablk
D: Morgan Krause
D: Jen Fortman
D: Emily Wilhelm
D: Breanne Mullins
M: Claire Hilburger
M: Maddie Krejci
M: Olivia Stapleton
M: Allison Svoboda
F: Abbie Boswell
F: Alexis Dandridge
MVP of the Match: Alexis Dandridge, Naperville North