Fenwick's 1st half tops Lincoln-Way C.
Friars pour on wind-aided goals to advance to Windy City final
By Steve Millar
BURBANK – With the wind howling on a cold Tuesday night at Reavis, the plan for Fenwick was simple once the Friars won the coin toss.
“We knew we had the wind for the first half, so we had to take advantage,” senior forward Megan Hosty said. “We knew they’d have it for the second half, so we wanted to jump ahead and get as many in as we could and then hold on to the lead.”
Fenwick did just that, scoring three first half goals and holding on for a 3-1 win over Lincoln-Way Central in a Windy City Ram Classic semifinal.
The Friars (4-0-0) advance to take on Stagg (4-0-0) in the championship game of the 32-team event at 2 p.m. Sunday at Toyota Park.
Fenwick’s last appearance in the tournament’s final was 2013, when it topped Bolingbrook 1-0.
“This is awesome,” senior defender Lauren Miller said. “I’ve been on varsity since freshman year and every year we’ve made it to the quarterfinals or semifinals here and gotten so close, so it’s so exciting to finally be going to Toyota Park for the championship my senior year.”
The Friars took just 2 minutes, 20 seconds to break through as senior defender Shannon Ehrhardt played a long pass out of the back and found Hosty sprinting down the middle of the field.
Hosty got behind the defense on a breakaway and finished, rolling a shot under Lincoln-Way Central goalkeeper Peyton Vecchiet.
“When you have a team as amazing as I do and they play the best passes in the world, how could I not finish?” Hosty said. “They make it easy on me, and I just want to tap it in for them.”
Junior midfielder Anissa Nourse, Chicagoland Soccer’s MVP of the Match, went to work from there. Nourse scored twice in a 20-minute span to give Fenwick its biggest lead.
In the 12th minute, she tracked down a loose ball along the sidelines and made a quick dash down the left side of the box before tucking a shot inside the near post.
Then, with just under four minutes left in the first half, Nourse played a short corner kick to Anna Waring, who quickly got the ball back to Nourse. Nourse ripped a tough-angle shot into the upper portion of the net to make it 3-0.
Nourse is up to five goals and five assists on the season.
“She’s a junior in the thick of her recruitment,” Fenwick coach Robert Watson said. “She has a lot of schools looking at her, but the fact that she doesn’t have more looking at her is shocking to me. She’s technical, she’s crafty, and when she gets the ball on her feet she can really hurt you. She’s tearing it up right now.”
The goal off the corner kick came on a play the Friars ran multiple times Tuesday in an attempt to get Nourse as many looks at goal as possible.
“That’s straight from our training grounds,” Watson said. “It’s a good set play for us, and we’ll definitely use it again.”
With the Friars taking a 3-0 lead to halftime, they’d accomplished their mission of building a big first half lead.
“Sometimes that coin flip is important in this type of weather,” Watson said. “We wanted to get the wind at our backs for the first half, try to jump ahead and hold on, and that’s pretty much what we did.”
Lincoln-Way Central (3-1-0) pushed hard in the second half, but Fenwick senior goalkeeper McKenzie Blaze came through with some big stops.
She made five saves, including a huge stop on a good look from in-tight by the Knights’ Nicolette Gossage with 22 minutes to go.
Gossage, Central’s top goal scorer, got open down the middle off a nice through pass from Meghan Lucchetti and unleashed a hard shot, but Blaze was able to knock it down.
Lucchetti fired a free kick from 35 yards off the crossbar in the 62nd minute.
With nine minutes left, the Knights were awarded a penalty kick, but Blaze dove to her left to knock away Maddie Jenig’s shot.
“There were no nerves and whatever happens, happens,” Blaze said. “I was just hoping I’d guess correctly.”
The Knights finally broke through with 7:52 left when Lucchetti picked off a clearing attempt and sent a high, looping shot toward the goal from 40 yards.
The ball hung up in the wind and sailed over Blaze’s head and in.
“McKenzie almost had the shutout, and she just got a bit unlucky on their goal,” Watson said. “The PK stop was good. She was making fun of herself after the game saying she stopped all the hard ones and then missed the easy one.
“She’s playing really well. This should definitely boost her confidence.”
Blaze credited her defenders, including Miller, Ehrhardt, Alyssa Ruiz and Tess Shannon.
“Our defense really did a great job,” she said. “We were told to get everything out, and that’s what we did.”
Fenwick is a veteran-laded team that started seven seniors Tuesday. Blaze said the team has great chemistry.
“We’ve all had a whole year playing together last year and that makes us so much better,” she said. “We all know what each other’s next move is going to be, and we play smarter because of that.”
Lincoln-Way Central coach Dan Radz, meanwhile, was encouraged by his team’s second-half pressure, but knows there are things to clean up.
“We had a chance on the PK, and Megan hit that lofted ball off the crossbar,” he said. “If we hit those two, it’s a different story. But, it just didn’t happen for us. Fenwick is a good team. They knocked the ball around well, so congratulations to them and good luck to them in the championship game.
“When they got the wind in the first half, I told the girls that they were coming at us right away. We just weren’t as strong as we needed to be in the first half. We didn’t step to the ball enough, and they took advantage.”
Up next for the Knights is Saturday’s third place game against Plainfield South.
“We’ve done a lot of good things these first four games,” Radz said. “We just have to learn from this loss and get better.”
Starting lineups
Fenwick
GK: McKenzie Blaze
D: Shannon Ehrhardt
D: Lauren Miller
D: Alyssa Ruiz
D: Tess Shannon
M: Kaylie Fredian
M: Regan Hultquist
M: Anissa Nourse
M: Anna Waring
F: Lily Reardon
F: Morgan Hosty
Lincoln-Way Central
GK: Peyton Vecchiet
D: Dana Boucher
D: Lauren Limpin
D: Megan Andjelic
D: Megan Lucchetti
M: Leah Willner
M: Maddie Jenig
M: Shannon Klemm
M: Audrey Bulow
F: Nicolette Gossage
F: Maddie Melde
Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match: Anissa Nourse, jr., M, Fenwick
Scoring Summary
First half
Fenwick: Morgan Hosty (Shannon Ehrhardt), 3rd minute
Fenwick: Anissa Nourse (unassisted), 12th minute
Fenwick: Nourse (Anna Waring), 32nd minute
Second half
Lincoln-Way Central: Megan Lucchetti (unassisted), 63rd minute
Friars pour on wind-aided goals to advance to Windy City final
By Steve Millar
BURBANK – With the wind howling on a cold Tuesday night at Reavis, the plan for Fenwick was simple once the Friars won the coin toss.
“We knew we had the wind for the first half, so we had to take advantage,” senior forward Megan Hosty said. “We knew they’d have it for the second half, so we wanted to jump ahead and get as many in as we could and then hold on to the lead.”
Fenwick did just that, scoring three first half goals and holding on for a 3-1 win over Lincoln-Way Central in a Windy City Ram Classic semifinal.
The Friars (4-0-0) advance to take on Stagg (4-0-0) in the championship game of the 32-team event at 2 p.m. Sunday at Toyota Park.
Fenwick’s last appearance in the tournament’s final was 2013, when it topped Bolingbrook 1-0.
“This is awesome,” senior defender Lauren Miller said. “I’ve been on varsity since freshman year and every year we’ve made it to the quarterfinals or semifinals here and gotten so close, so it’s so exciting to finally be going to Toyota Park for the championship my senior year.”
The Friars took just 2 minutes, 20 seconds to break through as senior defender Shannon Ehrhardt played a long pass out of the back and found Hosty sprinting down the middle of the field.
Hosty got behind the defense on a breakaway and finished, rolling a shot under Lincoln-Way Central goalkeeper Peyton Vecchiet.
“When you have a team as amazing as I do and they play the best passes in the world, how could I not finish?” Hosty said. “They make it easy on me, and I just want to tap it in for them.”
Junior midfielder Anissa Nourse, Chicagoland Soccer’s MVP of the Match, went to work from there. Nourse scored twice in a 20-minute span to give Fenwick its biggest lead.
In the 12th minute, she tracked down a loose ball along the sidelines and made a quick dash down the left side of the box before tucking a shot inside the near post.
Then, with just under four minutes left in the first half, Nourse played a short corner kick to Anna Waring, who quickly got the ball back to Nourse. Nourse ripped a tough-angle shot into the upper portion of the net to make it 3-0.
Nourse is up to five goals and five assists on the season.
“She’s a junior in the thick of her recruitment,” Fenwick coach Robert Watson said. “She has a lot of schools looking at her, but the fact that she doesn’t have more looking at her is shocking to me. She’s technical, she’s crafty, and when she gets the ball on her feet she can really hurt you. She’s tearing it up right now.”
The goal off the corner kick came on a play the Friars ran multiple times Tuesday in an attempt to get Nourse as many looks at goal as possible.
“That’s straight from our training grounds,” Watson said. “It’s a good set play for us, and we’ll definitely use it again.”
With the Friars taking a 3-0 lead to halftime, they’d accomplished their mission of building a big first half lead.
“Sometimes that coin flip is important in this type of weather,” Watson said. “We wanted to get the wind at our backs for the first half, try to jump ahead and hold on, and that’s pretty much what we did.”
Lincoln-Way Central (3-1-0) pushed hard in the second half, but Fenwick senior goalkeeper McKenzie Blaze came through with some big stops.
She made five saves, including a huge stop on a good look from in-tight by the Knights’ Nicolette Gossage with 22 minutes to go.
Gossage, Central’s top goal scorer, got open down the middle off a nice through pass from Meghan Lucchetti and unleashed a hard shot, but Blaze was able to knock it down.
Lucchetti fired a free kick from 35 yards off the crossbar in the 62nd minute.
With nine minutes left, the Knights were awarded a penalty kick, but Blaze dove to her left to knock away Maddie Jenig’s shot.
“There were no nerves and whatever happens, happens,” Blaze said. “I was just hoping I’d guess correctly.”
The Knights finally broke through with 7:52 left when Lucchetti picked off a clearing attempt and sent a high, looping shot toward the goal from 40 yards.
The ball hung up in the wind and sailed over Blaze’s head and in.
“McKenzie almost had the shutout, and she just got a bit unlucky on their goal,” Watson said. “The PK stop was good. She was making fun of herself after the game saying she stopped all the hard ones and then missed the easy one.
“She’s playing really well. This should definitely boost her confidence.”
Blaze credited her defenders, including Miller, Ehrhardt, Alyssa Ruiz and Tess Shannon.
“Our defense really did a great job,” she said. “We were told to get everything out, and that’s what we did.”
Fenwick is a veteran-laded team that started seven seniors Tuesday. Blaze said the team has great chemistry.
“We’ve all had a whole year playing together last year and that makes us so much better,” she said. “We all know what each other’s next move is going to be, and we play smarter because of that.”
Lincoln-Way Central coach Dan Radz, meanwhile, was encouraged by his team’s second-half pressure, but knows there are things to clean up.
“We had a chance on the PK, and Megan hit that lofted ball off the crossbar,” he said. “If we hit those two, it’s a different story. But, it just didn’t happen for us. Fenwick is a good team. They knocked the ball around well, so congratulations to them and good luck to them in the championship game.
“When they got the wind in the first half, I told the girls that they were coming at us right away. We just weren’t as strong as we needed to be in the first half. We didn’t step to the ball enough, and they took advantage.”
Up next for the Knights is Saturday’s third place game against Plainfield South.
“We’ve done a lot of good things these first four games,” Radz said. “We just have to learn from this loss and get better.”
Starting lineups
Fenwick
GK: McKenzie Blaze
D: Shannon Ehrhardt
D: Lauren Miller
D: Alyssa Ruiz
D: Tess Shannon
M: Kaylie Fredian
M: Regan Hultquist
M: Anissa Nourse
M: Anna Waring
F: Lily Reardon
F: Morgan Hosty
Lincoln-Way Central
GK: Peyton Vecchiet
D: Dana Boucher
D: Lauren Limpin
D: Megan Andjelic
D: Megan Lucchetti
M: Leah Willner
M: Maddie Jenig
M: Shannon Klemm
M: Audrey Bulow
F: Nicolette Gossage
F: Maddie Melde
Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match: Anissa Nourse, jr., M, Fenwick
Scoring Summary
First half
Fenwick: Morgan Hosty (Shannon Ehrhardt), 3rd minute
Fenwick: Anissa Nourse (unassisted), 12th minute
Fenwick: Nourse (Anna Waring), 32nd minute
Second half
Lincoln-Way Central: Megan Lucchetti (unassisted), 63rd minute