St. Charles East marches past SC North
Fighting Saints post upset, win annual clash 5-3
By Chris Walker
ST. CHARLES – Fortunately Renato Avendano hasn’t had the types of serious health concerns that Tri-Cities Night raises money to combat.
But he has still had to overcome his own personal health issues because of Osgood-Schlatter syndrome.
That condition didn't stop the St. Charles East junior from a break-out game during Thursday’s huge rivalry matchup against St. Charles North; he led the Saints with a pair of goals in a 5-3 victory over the ranked North Stars.
It was a big game in the new DuKane Conference race and was the first game of a busy night of soccer during the annual Tri-Cities Night, this time being played on the beautiful new turf surface at St. Charles East.
The tradition of Tri-Cities Night is for the local soccer community to come together as one and have a fundraising event that will benefit a local resident and her or his family. Those stricken with cancer and other medical crises have been the beneficiaries of past events. On Thursday, it was former St. Charles East teacher and soccer coach Paul Jennison, who is now an assistant coach for the women’s program at Northwestern University.
Jennison and his wife Lauren were blessed to welcome Charlotte Victoria Jennison into this world in August, but their sweet bundle of joy required immediate medical attention due to heart complications. Born on Aug. 10, just a week later, doctors performed open heart surgery.
The evening featured the sale of special t-shirts, a 50/50 raffle and other donations to support the Jennison family.
“It feels good to be here today,” Avendano said. “It makes us all feel better, getting everyone out here, with everyone with their shirts on and stuff. We’re all promoting it. It feels good.”
It certainly had to feel great for Avendano when he connected on the first and fifth goals that the Saints scored in the victory.
Avendano connected for the first time with 18:57 remaining in the first half. He took off down the right side before he sliced his way toward the goal and caught up with a pass from Sebastian Carranza.
“He’s a freshman and has been doing good so far,” Avendano said about Carranza. “We’re happy with him. He played a good ball.”
Now the winners of six of their last seven, the Saints have got a good thing going on offense.
“We have a lot of speed up-top so all our players know to look for me, Truitt (Battin) and Carranza and whoever else is up-top,” Avendano said. “That’s pretty much been one of our keys – looking for our fast players and playing through.”
“We know we have the kids up-top,” Saints coach Vince DiNuzzo said. “We just need to minimize the mistakes in back. We didn’t do as good a job of that, but we’re thankful our forwards and midfielders picked us up.”
The Saints (7-3-0, 2-1-0) weren’t satisfied with that early 1-0 advantage and extended it to 2-0 with 2:14 left before half when Brendan Adams pounced on a missed clear by the North Stars.
On a loose ball in-close in the penalty box, none of the North Stars were able to get the ball out of the dangerous area. Instead, Adams secured possession and poked it past North Stars goalkeeper Bobby Curran.
Those expecting the North Stars to come roaring back to begin the second half had to be surprised to see the Saints extend their lead to 3-0 just 4:51 into play on a Battin penalty kick.
“So in the second half it felt like we still have momentum when we scored that goal off that penalty that Truitt had created,” DiNuzzo said. “It felt like it kind of killed off the game, but then they scored against the run of play on self-inflicted errors and credit to them, and then it happened again.”
The North Stars (8-4-1, 1-2-1), who are ranked no. 20 in the Chicagoland Soccer Top 25, finally got on the board when Matthew Beaulieu converted a penalty kick with 26:21 left in the game. It was the kind of play that sparked his team; he scored again less than two minutes later to suddenly make a game of it at 3-2 with 24:40 still to play.
“It wasn’t a full comeback, but we worked as hard as we could in the second half, but you can’t give them two or three goals in the first half,” Beaulieu said. “We’ll always regret not playing the way we wanted in the first half.”
Beaulieu was disappointed in the slow start and how it can be a poor trend at times for the North Stars.
“Sometimes we come out with a lot of energy and play great,” he said. “Sometimes we come out like we did in the first half today, and that’s just something we need to work on.”
St. Charles East recovered.
“The momentum completely changed, but I was happy our kids were resilient enough to overcome that,” DiNuzzo said. “It’s tough to give up two goals regardless of the score line. It was 3-2, but it felt like we were losing 3-2.”
Nick Nelson gave the Saints some much appreciated breathing room when he converted a penalty kick with 14:19 left to play and that extra tally would come in quite handy after Thomas Weber scored for the North Stars with 4:24 to play to once again make it just a one-goal game.
“It’s possible to come back from three goals, but there’s not much you can do,” Beaulieu said. “We decided a little too late.”
The Saints finally seemed to wrap the game up for good when Avendano, who was named the Chicagoland Soccer Man of the Match, scored on a rebound off a shot from Grayson Biddle with 2:53 on the clock.
“I though (Biddle) was going to put it in, but you learn to follow your players’ shots so I just followed him in and the ball came out to me,” Avendano said. “With such big games like this it’s all effort and energy, and the game gets in your head until the end if you’re not performing. You’ve got to try your best, and we all worked hard.”
Avendano acknowledged that things are going rather well for him, despite the adversity he’s had to face.
He didn’t play soccer while in eighth grade and during his freshman year because of the Osgood-Schlatter syndrome. Last year he came back to the game and was on the JV squad.
“He came in as a sophomore, and we wanted to bring him on our team so bad,” DiNuzzo said. “But we let him get that starting spot at the JV level. I think he benefitted from that, and playing club soccer at Campton has helped him. He hits a different gear on the sideline, and it looks like no one can keep up with him.”
Osgood-Schlatter syndrome, which occurs most often in children who participate in sports like soccer that involve running, jumping and rapid changes in direction, causes knee pain in adolescent athletes. Avendano has been stricken in both knees, but he’s learned to live with it.
“It’s stretching and icing every night,” he said. “That’s a constant. I have an ice pack for 20 minutes and take it off, and it’s the same thing an hour later. I had eight months of physical therapy and considered surgery. I still struggle with it, but I keep working.”
A year ago, the Saints went into St. Charles North and stunned the North Stars, beating them 3-0. That truly was an upset as the Saints had been struggling while the North Stars ended up going to state. This time, both teams came into play with some success so far this season and the North Stars were coming off probably their biggest win of the season, beating Lake Park 2-1 and giving the Lancers their first defeat.
“It was an old-fashioned butt whooping in the first half,” St. Charles North coach Eric Willson said. “While I did feel like we started the game out with a little bit of the run of the play, as soon as they got their goal our body language got down, and it was pretty disappointing to see. And when you spot a team three goals it’s pretty hard to come back from.”
Willson was pleased to his team's resiliency when they cut their deficit to one goal on two occasions.
“I just told them I’m incredibly proud of how we fought in the second half,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it. We got ourselves back down to one goal, and I felt like we had a ton of momentum and a really, really unfortunate penalty called on us that pretty much sealed the deal and that was tough. But again you don’t want to put yourself in that spot where you’re going to try climb out of the hole. You just have to be better than we were in the first half.”
Consistency continues to plague a North Stars team that can look state-bound one day and one-and-out the next.
“There’s no doubt about it, we’re a rollercoaster, whatever adjective you’d like to use with our inconsistent performance is what we are,” Willson said. “Tuesday night was fantastic for us in a realty tough conference game against a really tough team, and we come here and it’s the same kind of scenario, and we looked like a different team than Tuesday night.”
If Tuesday night belonged to the North Stars against Lake Park, Thursday certainly belonged to the Saints.
“There’s nothing really like East-North for the kids,” DiNuzzo said. “As an outsider coming in, I didn’t really get it. I get it now. I see different things that you don’t see throughout the season at this game. I’m glad we were able to play them and get that experience and get the win.”
Starting lineups
St. Charles North
GK: Bobby Curran
D: John Kirby
D: Jonathan Mincielli
D: Joey Sommer
MF: Joshua Amaro
MF: Gabriel D’Amico
MF: Parker Kolb
MF: Thomas Weber
F: Matthew Beaulieu
F: Logan Michels
F: Faizan Mohiuddin
St. Charles East
GK: Zach Doerr
D: Grayson Biddle
D: Ryan Champine
D: Ulises Caballero
D: Geoff Unterberg
MF: Brendan Adams
MF: Renato Avendano
MF: Alex Mancera
MF: Truitt Battin
MF: Luke Schnitker
F: Sebastian Carranza
Chicagoland Soccer Man of the Match: Renato Avendano, jr., MF, St. Charles East
Scoring Summary
First half
St. Charles East – Renato Avendano (Sebastian Carranza), 18:57
St. Charles East – Brendan Adams (unassisted), 2:14
Second half
St. Charles East – Truitt Battin PK, 35:09
St. Charles North – Matthew Beaulieu PK, 26:21
St. Charles North – Matthew Beaulieu (unassisted), 24:40
St. Charles East – Nick Nelson PK, 14:19
St. Charles North – Thomas Weber (unassisted), 4:24
St. Charles East – Renato Avendano (Grayson Biddle), 2:53
Fighting Saints post upset, win annual clash 5-3
By Chris Walker
ST. CHARLES – Fortunately Renato Avendano hasn’t had the types of serious health concerns that Tri-Cities Night raises money to combat.
But he has still had to overcome his own personal health issues because of Osgood-Schlatter syndrome.
That condition didn't stop the St. Charles East junior from a break-out game during Thursday’s huge rivalry matchup against St. Charles North; he led the Saints with a pair of goals in a 5-3 victory over the ranked North Stars.
It was a big game in the new DuKane Conference race and was the first game of a busy night of soccer during the annual Tri-Cities Night, this time being played on the beautiful new turf surface at St. Charles East.
The tradition of Tri-Cities Night is for the local soccer community to come together as one and have a fundraising event that will benefit a local resident and her or his family. Those stricken with cancer and other medical crises have been the beneficiaries of past events. On Thursday, it was former St. Charles East teacher and soccer coach Paul Jennison, who is now an assistant coach for the women’s program at Northwestern University.
Jennison and his wife Lauren were blessed to welcome Charlotte Victoria Jennison into this world in August, but their sweet bundle of joy required immediate medical attention due to heart complications. Born on Aug. 10, just a week later, doctors performed open heart surgery.
The evening featured the sale of special t-shirts, a 50/50 raffle and other donations to support the Jennison family.
“It feels good to be here today,” Avendano said. “It makes us all feel better, getting everyone out here, with everyone with their shirts on and stuff. We’re all promoting it. It feels good.”
It certainly had to feel great for Avendano when he connected on the first and fifth goals that the Saints scored in the victory.
Avendano connected for the first time with 18:57 remaining in the first half. He took off down the right side before he sliced his way toward the goal and caught up with a pass from Sebastian Carranza.
“He’s a freshman and has been doing good so far,” Avendano said about Carranza. “We’re happy with him. He played a good ball.”
Now the winners of six of their last seven, the Saints have got a good thing going on offense.
“We have a lot of speed up-top so all our players know to look for me, Truitt (Battin) and Carranza and whoever else is up-top,” Avendano said. “That’s pretty much been one of our keys – looking for our fast players and playing through.”
“We know we have the kids up-top,” Saints coach Vince DiNuzzo said. “We just need to minimize the mistakes in back. We didn’t do as good a job of that, but we’re thankful our forwards and midfielders picked us up.”
The Saints (7-3-0, 2-1-0) weren’t satisfied with that early 1-0 advantage and extended it to 2-0 with 2:14 left before half when Brendan Adams pounced on a missed clear by the North Stars.
On a loose ball in-close in the penalty box, none of the North Stars were able to get the ball out of the dangerous area. Instead, Adams secured possession and poked it past North Stars goalkeeper Bobby Curran.
Those expecting the North Stars to come roaring back to begin the second half had to be surprised to see the Saints extend their lead to 3-0 just 4:51 into play on a Battin penalty kick.
“So in the second half it felt like we still have momentum when we scored that goal off that penalty that Truitt had created,” DiNuzzo said. “It felt like it kind of killed off the game, but then they scored against the run of play on self-inflicted errors and credit to them, and then it happened again.”
The North Stars (8-4-1, 1-2-1), who are ranked no. 20 in the Chicagoland Soccer Top 25, finally got on the board when Matthew Beaulieu converted a penalty kick with 26:21 left in the game. It was the kind of play that sparked his team; he scored again less than two minutes later to suddenly make a game of it at 3-2 with 24:40 still to play.
“It wasn’t a full comeback, but we worked as hard as we could in the second half, but you can’t give them two or three goals in the first half,” Beaulieu said. “We’ll always regret not playing the way we wanted in the first half.”
Beaulieu was disappointed in the slow start and how it can be a poor trend at times for the North Stars.
“Sometimes we come out with a lot of energy and play great,” he said. “Sometimes we come out like we did in the first half today, and that’s just something we need to work on.”
St. Charles East recovered.
“The momentum completely changed, but I was happy our kids were resilient enough to overcome that,” DiNuzzo said. “It’s tough to give up two goals regardless of the score line. It was 3-2, but it felt like we were losing 3-2.”
Nick Nelson gave the Saints some much appreciated breathing room when he converted a penalty kick with 14:19 left to play and that extra tally would come in quite handy after Thomas Weber scored for the North Stars with 4:24 to play to once again make it just a one-goal game.
“It’s possible to come back from three goals, but there’s not much you can do,” Beaulieu said. “We decided a little too late.”
The Saints finally seemed to wrap the game up for good when Avendano, who was named the Chicagoland Soccer Man of the Match, scored on a rebound off a shot from Grayson Biddle with 2:53 on the clock.
“I though (Biddle) was going to put it in, but you learn to follow your players’ shots so I just followed him in and the ball came out to me,” Avendano said. “With such big games like this it’s all effort and energy, and the game gets in your head until the end if you’re not performing. You’ve got to try your best, and we all worked hard.”
Avendano acknowledged that things are going rather well for him, despite the adversity he’s had to face.
He didn’t play soccer while in eighth grade and during his freshman year because of the Osgood-Schlatter syndrome. Last year he came back to the game and was on the JV squad.
“He came in as a sophomore, and we wanted to bring him on our team so bad,” DiNuzzo said. “But we let him get that starting spot at the JV level. I think he benefitted from that, and playing club soccer at Campton has helped him. He hits a different gear on the sideline, and it looks like no one can keep up with him.”
Osgood-Schlatter syndrome, which occurs most often in children who participate in sports like soccer that involve running, jumping and rapid changes in direction, causes knee pain in adolescent athletes. Avendano has been stricken in both knees, but he’s learned to live with it.
“It’s stretching and icing every night,” he said. “That’s a constant. I have an ice pack for 20 minutes and take it off, and it’s the same thing an hour later. I had eight months of physical therapy and considered surgery. I still struggle with it, but I keep working.”
A year ago, the Saints went into St. Charles North and stunned the North Stars, beating them 3-0. That truly was an upset as the Saints had been struggling while the North Stars ended up going to state. This time, both teams came into play with some success so far this season and the North Stars were coming off probably their biggest win of the season, beating Lake Park 2-1 and giving the Lancers their first defeat.
“It was an old-fashioned butt whooping in the first half,” St. Charles North coach Eric Willson said. “While I did feel like we started the game out with a little bit of the run of the play, as soon as they got their goal our body language got down, and it was pretty disappointing to see. And when you spot a team three goals it’s pretty hard to come back from.”
Willson was pleased to his team's resiliency when they cut their deficit to one goal on two occasions.
“I just told them I’m incredibly proud of how we fought in the second half,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it. We got ourselves back down to one goal, and I felt like we had a ton of momentum and a really, really unfortunate penalty called on us that pretty much sealed the deal and that was tough. But again you don’t want to put yourself in that spot where you’re going to try climb out of the hole. You just have to be better than we were in the first half.”
Consistency continues to plague a North Stars team that can look state-bound one day and one-and-out the next.
“There’s no doubt about it, we’re a rollercoaster, whatever adjective you’d like to use with our inconsistent performance is what we are,” Willson said. “Tuesday night was fantastic for us in a realty tough conference game against a really tough team, and we come here and it’s the same kind of scenario, and we looked like a different team than Tuesday night.”
If Tuesday night belonged to the North Stars against Lake Park, Thursday certainly belonged to the Saints.
“There’s nothing really like East-North for the kids,” DiNuzzo said. “As an outsider coming in, I didn’t really get it. I get it now. I see different things that you don’t see throughout the season at this game. I’m glad we were able to play them and get that experience and get the win.”
Starting lineups
St. Charles North
GK: Bobby Curran
D: John Kirby
D: Jonathan Mincielli
D: Joey Sommer
MF: Joshua Amaro
MF: Gabriel D’Amico
MF: Parker Kolb
MF: Thomas Weber
F: Matthew Beaulieu
F: Logan Michels
F: Faizan Mohiuddin
St. Charles East
GK: Zach Doerr
D: Grayson Biddle
D: Ryan Champine
D: Ulises Caballero
D: Geoff Unterberg
MF: Brendan Adams
MF: Renato Avendano
MF: Alex Mancera
MF: Truitt Battin
MF: Luke Schnitker
F: Sebastian Carranza
Chicagoland Soccer Man of the Match: Renato Avendano, jr., MF, St. Charles East
Scoring Summary
First half
St. Charles East – Renato Avendano (Sebastian Carranza), 18:57
St. Charles East – Brendan Adams (unassisted), 2:14
Second half
St. Charles East – Truitt Battin PK, 35:09
St. Charles North – Matthew Beaulieu PK, 26:21
St. Charles North – Matthew Beaulieu (unassisted), 24:40
St. Charles East – Nick Nelson PK, 14:19
St. Charles North – Thomas Weber (unassisted), 4:24
St. Charles East – Renato Avendano (Grayson Biddle), 2:53