Benet salvages tie with Neuqua Valley
Rutkowski bags equalizer for Redwings in hard-fought 2-2 draw
By Matt Le Cren
NAPERVILLE – Benet’s visit to Neuqua Valley on Thursday had a little bit of a lot of things.
Except for a victor.
In yet another of the hard-fought, entertaining games the 2018 season has become known for, Benet and Neuqua both took a lead and rallied from a goal down. Both sides were guilty of some defensive miscues and spectacular individual efforts.
In the end, neither team got all it wanted in a 2-2 draw in Naperville.
The visiting Redwings (6-2-1), who are ranked 11th in the Chicagoland Soccer Top 25, left feeling less satisfied than the Wildcats (4-3-2) because they had the vast majority of the scoring chances and were coming off a 7-0 rout of Joliet Catholic.
“(The Wildcats) are a good team,” Benet coach Sean Wesley said. “They have a good system. They’re well-coached and they have good players.
“But when you hit the post three times in a game, yes, (we’re disappointed). We felt one of those could have gone in.
“We expected to get a few more (goals), and it just didn’t go our way today.”
That it was, and the result was in doubt until the end, though Benet probably was unlucky not to win. Senior Franklin Rutkowski and freshman Trent McVey each saw shots hit the crossbar, though the latter’s attempt led to the former’s tying goal early in the second half.
It came with 34:41 remaining when defender Jonathan Mitra tracked down the rebound of McVey’s carom and quickly found Rutkowski just inside the middle of the box for a 15-yard finish.
There was some controversy about the play because the linesman raised his flag for offsides on McVey’s shot but the referee ignored it. The Wildcats made the mistake of not playing until the whistle.
“Everybody kind of stopped,” Neuqua Valley senior David Kuhn said. “We’ll go back to the highlights and have a look at it.”
There were plenty of highlights in this one. The first one came with 36:07 to go in the first half when Nick Renfro scored on a header to give Benet a 1-0 lead.
Mitra started the play with a 45-yard free kick from the right wing. Neuqua starting goalie Bryson Ramsey came out and punched the ball up in the air, but it didn’t go very far and Renfro crashed in for a far-post finish.
“Benet’s a super-strong team,” Neuqua senior midfielder Jose Navarro said. “We knew it was going to be a dogfight, and there’s a couple kids on that team that we knew we had to look out for.
“I think we were prepared, but both teams are known for fighting really hard. So at the end of the day it was who was going to finish their chances, who was going to commit more errors. It came down to who was going to take (advantage of) their opportunities.”
Navarro took advantage of one when he attacked up the middle and worked a give-and-go with Anthony Safo that led to the equalizer at the 13:41 mark.
Safo’s flick sprung Navarro into the left side of the Benet box, where he got past a defender and fired a grounder past Benet goalie Vytautas Staniskis. The ball might have gone wide of the right post but was deflected into the net by a defender who was trying to shield the ball from an oncoming attacker.
So Neuqua Valley reached intermission tied despite being outshot 6-1, but it didn’t take long for the Wildcats to get aggressive in the second half.
Attacking off the second half kickoff, Neuqua seized the lead after just 23 seconds on a great hustle play by Kuhn, who caught Benet’s defense napping and latched onto a long pass from Brandon Szabo.
Kuhn beat a defender and scored a stunner to give the hosts a surprising 2-1 edge.
“I played the ball back, then Tom (Bludgen) checked and played the ball back to Szabo,” Kuhn said. “I just saw that their right back had completely stepped up, and I was like, all right.
“I just shot down that gap and luckily (Szabo) saw me. I wasn’t even looking at the ball. I just started sprinting down the line. It was exciting.”
The excitement, though, was far from over. Rutkowski’s goal tied it just five minutes later, ending a daylong frustration for the Benet veteran, who earlier in the game had one shot ping the pipe and two other rocket shots stopped by Ramsey, who tipped one of the shots just over the bar.
Ramsey made three saves in the first half before giving way to Dylan Soto, who made five saves after the break, including a reflex stop on a hard drive from Rutkowski with 1:59 remaining.
That was to be the last shot in a flurry of action that saw Benet press forward in waves in a last-ditch effort to win.
“It was definitely a hard battle,” Renfro said. “We were really pressing the last 15 (minutes) or so. It was a back-and-forth game. Thought we had it.”
What each team had was the will to win, though it was largely negated by the opponent rather than squandered via missed opportunities. The midfield matchup, particularly that of club teammates Renfro and Navarro, was the highlight. Both helped Galaxy SC win the U-17 national championship this summer and both had plenty of help from Rutkowski and Kuhn, respectively.
“Two great players there,” Renfro said of Navarro and Kuhn. “They were really solid in the midfield, for sure.
“When two good midfielders are matched up, this is what’s going to happen. We’ll have a tie.”
Just as he did when playing Tuesday against Naperville North, which featured nine of his club teammates, Navarro enjoyed the matchup with Renfro.
“It was a super-special feeling,” Navarro said. “It’s fun every time, especially since we play together in the middle.
“We knew we were going to match up against each other. It’s a fun game, a competitive game, and we weren’t going to go easy on each other. It’s always a dogfight, so it was fun.”
Kuhn agreed.
“I thought it was a great game,” Kuhn said. “Their midfield is really strong. It was always a 50-50 (chance) in the air.”
Yet both teams are striving to get better.
“What I take out of this game is we’ve got to keep our composure more, stay disciplined and keep passing it,” Kuhn said. “We’ve got to keep moving and keep our shape, especially in the midfield. We’re working on that a lot.”
Benet also has much to work on. The Redwings are off to an impressive start despite starting only three seniors. Their only losses were 1-0 to two-time defending state champion Naperville North and 2-0 to Libertyville, last year’s state runner-up.
“We’re doing pretty good,” Renfro said. “We want to avenge our two losses to Libertyville and (Naperville) North, two top teams, and we’re playing good competition, playing pretty good soccer.
“Obviously we have room to improve on with scoring goals, but our defense is tight. Hopefully we can keep it up.”
Wesley was happy that the Redwings were able to recover from the second half deficit but disappointed about not getting a win.
“The blunder at the start of the second half kind of digs a hole for us, but the kids fought hard and were able to still get something out of it,” Wesley said. “If you asked me before this game (if Benet was where he expected it to be) I would probably have said yes.
“We took (on) North, and we gave them a really good game. In the Libertyville game, unfortunately we had an early mistake and had to dig out of that hole, and we played well.
“We’re thinking wow, maybe we’re a lot closer (to the two top teams in the state) than maybe we thought at the beginning of the season we would be, and to not be able to find a result out of this game kind of knocks us back just a little notch.
“We’re going to have to find a way to clean it up in the back if we’re going to really take this as deep as we want to this year.”
But the pieces are clearly in place, even if many of them are green.
McVey had a hat-trick in the win over Joliet Catholic and already has eight goals.
“Everybody out here is a work in progress, but he’s a hunter,” Wesley said of McVey. “He’s got good pace, and he’s a goal scorer. He just lives in the box.
“His potential long-term is through the roof. He reminds me of Kyle Kenagy, just a kid who wants to go to goal every time he touches the ball and doesn’t take no for an answer. These are good kids to have on your team.”
Starting lineups
Benet
GK Vytautas Staniskis
D Jonathan Mitra
D Kyle Kohlsaat
D Zach Serafin
D Thomas Miskin
M Franklin Rutkowski
M Preston Wray
M Nick Renfro
M Anthony Klos
F Trent McVey
F Christopher Mankowski
Neuqua Valley
GK Bryson Ramsey
D Kevin Wu
D Ryan Jasek
D Anthony Safo
D Brandon Szabo
M Mac Lehman
M Tom Bludgen
M Jose Navarro
M David Kuhn
M Sean Osoba
F Jason Chisnell
Chicagoland Soccer Man of the Match – Nick Renfro, jr., MF, Benet
Scoring summary
First half
Benet – Nick Renfro 36:07
Neuqua Valley – own goal 13:41
Second half
Neuqua Valley – David Kuhn (Brandon Szabo) 39:37
Benet – Franklin Rutkowski (Jonathan Mitra) 34:31
Rutkowski bags equalizer for Redwings in hard-fought 2-2 draw
By Matt Le Cren
NAPERVILLE – Benet’s visit to Neuqua Valley on Thursday had a little bit of a lot of things.
Except for a victor.
In yet another of the hard-fought, entertaining games the 2018 season has become known for, Benet and Neuqua both took a lead and rallied from a goal down. Both sides were guilty of some defensive miscues and spectacular individual efforts.
In the end, neither team got all it wanted in a 2-2 draw in Naperville.
The visiting Redwings (6-2-1), who are ranked 11th in the Chicagoland Soccer Top 25, left feeling less satisfied than the Wildcats (4-3-2) because they had the vast majority of the scoring chances and were coming off a 7-0 rout of Joliet Catholic.
“(The Wildcats) are a good team,” Benet coach Sean Wesley said. “They have a good system. They’re well-coached and they have good players.
“But when you hit the post three times in a game, yes, (we’re disappointed). We felt one of those could have gone in.
“We expected to get a few more (goals), and it just didn’t go our way today.”
That it was, and the result was in doubt until the end, though Benet probably was unlucky not to win. Senior Franklin Rutkowski and freshman Trent McVey each saw shots hit the crossbar, though the latter’s attempt led to the former’s tying goal early in the second half.
It came with 34:41 remaining when defender Jonathan Mitra tracked down the rebound of McVey’s carom and quickly found Rutkowski just inside the middle of the box for a 15-yard finish.
There was some controversy about the play because the linesman raised his flag for offsides on McVey’s shot but the referee ignored it. The Wildcats made the mistake of not playing until the whistle.
“Everybody kind of stopped,” Neuqua Valley senior David Kuhn said. “We’ll go back to the highlights and have a look at it.”
There were plenty of highlights in this one. The first one came with 36:07 to go in the first half when Nick Renfro scored on a header to give Benet a 1-0 lead.
Mitra started the play with a 45-yard free kick from the right wing. Neuqua starting goalie Bryson Ramsey came out and punched the ball up in the air, but it didn’t go very far and Renfro crashed in for a far-post finish.
“Benet’s a super-strong team,” Neuqua senior midfielder Jose Navarro said. “We knew it was going to be a dogfight, and there’s a couple kids on that team that we knew we had to look out for.
“I think we were prepared, but both teams are known for fighting really hard. So at the end of the day it was who was going to finish their chances, who was going to commit more errors. It came down to who was going to take (advantage of) their opportunities.”
Navarro took advantage of one when he attacked up the middle and worked a give-and-go with Anthony Safo that led to the equalizer at the 13:41 mark.
Safo’s flick sprung Navarro into the left side of the Benet box, where he got past a defender and fired a grounder past Benet goalie Vytautas Staniskis. The ball might have gone wide of the right post but was deflected into the net by a defender who was trying to shield the ball from an oncoming attacker.
So Neuqua Valley reached intermission tied despite being outshot 6-1, but it didn’t take long for the Wildcats to get aggressive in the second half.
Attacking off the second half kickoff, Neuqua seized the lead after just 23 seconds on a great hustle play by Kuhn, who caught Benet’s defense napping and latched onto a long pass from Brandon Szabo.
Kuhn beat a defender and scored a stunner to give the hosts a surprising 2-1 edge.
“I played the ball back, then Tom (Bludgen) checked and played the ball back to Szabo,” Kuhn said. “I just saw that their right back had completely stepped up, and I was like, all right.
“I just shot down that gap and luckily (Szabo) saw me. I wasn’t even looking at the ball. I just started sprinting down the line. It was exciting.”
The excitement, though, was far from over. Rutkowski’s goal tied it just five minutes later, ending a daylong frustration for the Benet veteran, who earlier in the game had one shot ping the pipe and two other rocket shots stopped by Ramsey, who tipped one of the shots just over the bar.
Ramsey made three saves in the first half before giving way to Dylan Soto, who made five saves after the break, including a reflex stop on a hard drive from Rutkowski with 1:59 remaining.
That was to be the last shot in a flurry of action that saw Benet press forward in waves in a last-ditch effort to win.
“It was definitely a hard battle,” Renfro said. “We were really pressing the last 15 (minutes) or so. It was a back-and-forth game. Thought we had it.”
What each team had was the will to win, though it was largely negated by the opponent rather than squandered via missed opportunities. The midfield matchup, particularly that of club teammates Renfro and Navarro, was the highlight. Both helped Galaxy SC win the U-17 national championship this summer and both had plenty of help from Rutkowski and Kuhn, respectively.
“Two great players there,” Renfro said of Navarro and Kuhn. “They were really solid in the midfield, for sure.
“When two good midfielders are matched up, this is what’s going to happen. We’ll have a tie.”
Just as he did when playing Tuesday against Naperville North, which featured nine of his club teammates, Navarro enjoyed the matchup with Renfro.
“It was a super-special feeling,” Navarro said. “It’s fun every time, especially since we play together in the middle.
“We knew we were going to match up against each other. It’s a fun game, a competitive game, and we weren’t going to go easy on each other. It’s always a dogfight, so it was fun.”
Kuhn agreed.
“I thought it was a great game,” Kuhn said. “Their midfield is really strong. It was always a 50-50 (chance) in the air.”
Yet both teams are striving to get better.
“What I take out of this game is we’ve got to keep our composure more, stay disciplined and keep passing it,” Kuhn said. “We’ve got to keep moving and keep our shape, especially in the midfield. We’re working on that a lot.”
Benet also has much to work on. The Redwings are off to an impressive start despite starting only three seniors. Their only losses were 1-0 to two-time defending state champion Naperville North and 2-0 to Libertyville, last year’s state runner-up.
“We’re doing pretty good,” Renfro said. “We want to avenge our two losses to Libertyville and (Naperville) North, two top teams, and we’re playing good competition, playing pretty good soccer.
“Obviously we have room to improve on with scoring goals, but our defense is tight. Hopefully we can keep it up.”
Wesley was happy that the Redwings were able to recover from the second half deficit but disappointed about not getting a win.
“The blunder at the start of the second half kind of digs a hole for us, but the kids fought hard and were able to still get something out of it,” Wesley said. “If you asked me before this game (if Benet was where he expected it to be) I would probably have said yes.
“We took (on) North, and we gave them a really good game. In the Libertyville game, unfortunately we had an early mistake and had to dig out of that hole, and we played well.
“We’re thinking wow, maybe we’re a lot closer (to the two top teams in the state) than maybe we thought at the beginning of the season we would be, and to not be able to find a result out of this game kind of knocks us back just a little notch.
“We’re going to have to find a way to clean it up in the back if we’re going to really take this as deep as we want to this year.”
But the pieces are clearly in place, even if many of them are green.
McVey had a hat-trick in the win over Joliet Catholic and already has eight goals.
“Everybody out here is a work in progress, but he’s a hunter,” Wesley said of McVey. “He’s got good pace, and he’s a goal scorer. He just lives in the box.
“His potential long-term is through the roof. He reminds me of Kyle Kenagy, just a kid who wants to go to goal every time he touches the ball and doesn’t take no for an answer. These are good kids to have on your team.”
Starting lineups
Benet
GK Vytautas Staniskis
D Jonathan Mitra
D Kyle Kohlsaat
D Zach Serafin
D Thomas Miskin
M Franklin Rutkowski
M Preston Wray
M Nick Renfro
M Anthony Klos
F Trent McVey
F Christopher Mankowski
Neuqua Valley
GK Bryson Ramsey
D Kevin Wu
D Ryan Jasek
D Anthony Safo
D Brandon Szabo
M Mac Lehman
M Tom Bludgen
M Jose Navarro
M David Kuhn
M Sean Osoba
F Jason Chisnell
Chicagoland Soccer Man of the Match – Nick Renfro, jr., MF, Benet
Scoring summary
First half
Benet – Nick Renfro 36:07
Neuqua Valley – own goal 13:41
Second half
Neuqua Valley – David Kuhn (Brandon Szabo) 39:37
Benet – Franklin Rutkowski (Jonathan Mitra) 34:31