Storm falls victim to a sharp effort by St. Charles East

By Darryl Mellema
Photos courtesy of Judy Piczek

Falling behind a team that played as sharply on Thursday night as St. Charles East wasn’t a disgrace for South Elgin’s boys soccer players.

But as the deficit mounted, you could tell by expressions, mannerisms and in an increased intensity of play, that the way in which the match was progressing wasn’t to the team’s liking at all.

By the time St. Charles East had a 4-0 lead, the Storm were well past being content with the scoreline. And they did something about it.

It didn’t change the outcome of the game – but the efforts put in by South Elgin to score and finish on the short end of a 4-1 scoreline said something about the character of the team – something which may pay dividends as the early part of the season continues.

“Once you’re getting down and getting smashed, you can only take so much of it,” Storm junior Mike Kozielek said. “You try your hardest and eventually, it starts getting chippy.”

South Elgin (1-2) struggled to link its play against organized St. Charles East (1-1.) As a result, Storm passing moves broke down frequently in midfield, allowing the hosts a chance to counterattack.

“We’ve had a couple of games in a row and some people had heavy legs,” Kozielek said. “It’s tough when you go down a couple of goals early in the game. It’s kind of hard to bounce back and we gave up some cheap ones.”

Kozielek scored that goal, with 7:51 left when he took a through ball from EJ Hernandez and moved into the penalty area free of the Saints defense.

“It’s better than nothing,” Kozielek said. “You hate seeing ‘zero’ on the board at the end of the game. But it’s not what we want.”

The match left Storm goalie Jarod Schieler with plenty of work to do. He had already been forced to make two strong saves when the Saints opened the scoring. Ethan Jendrzejczyk got that goal after 15 minutes of play.

Schuler remained under pressure most of the rest of the half, and the Saints broke through again with 1:23 left when Jesse Nagelberg took the ball from a Storm defender and scored.

“Our defense just had a bad game,” Schieler said. “We didn’t mark up and lost some confidence back there. Usually the key to a good game is for our defense to be in synch. When we’re not in synch, then the midfield and forwards are going to have a hard time too.”

Before either team settled into the second half, St. Charles East was ahead 3-0 after Bryan Starosto headed in a Luke Cooper corner kick.

And the Saints made it 4-0 in the 20th minute of the second half when Johnny Bren whacked a left wing volley that deflected off a Storm defender and spun wildly into the air, past Schuler into the net.

“Sometimes soccer sometimes,” Schieler said. “That deflection that ended up chipping me at the back post, that was just unlucky.”

There was a feeling that nothing that occurred on Thursday couldn’t be fixed.

“I’ll definitely try to work with our defenders and try to make sure we have one mind,” Schuler said.

A lack of movement in the midfield exacerbated whatever troubles the defense was having.

“You have to move better than that,” South Elgin coach John Uveges said. “It kind of hurt us. When you get high pressure like they had—(the Saints) were very quick—the only way around it is that you’ve got to move the ball quicker. If your supporting triangles aren’t there, it’s going to hurt you.”

There were a handful of chances for the Storm. Kozielek hit a loose ball wide midway through the second half when the score was 1-0. Danny Frey stabbed a shot just wide shortly after the score moved to 3-0. And Jeremy Weber forced a save from Nick Novotny when the score was 4-0 with 15 minutes to play.

“I like the way our kids are playing hard,” Uveges said. “They’re working hard and matching up with players. They’re physical when they need to be, and we don’t have a lot of size. It’s a good bunch of guys.”

A bit of the intensity shown by St. Charles East on Thursday was in response to their season-opener, in which Neuqua Valley raced to a 4-0 lead within a half-hour of play and held onto that scoreline the ensuing 50 minutes for an emphatic victory.

“They played well,” St. Charles East coach Paul Jennison said. “We changed the system up a little bit tonight. They were very, very desperate to play tonight after their performance at Neuqua Valley. They let themselves down very badly.”

For a team that has struggled to convert scoring chances, Thursday’s result was positive for the Saints.

“The last two years, our problem has been that we’ve played well and not finished,” Jennison said. “We’re certainly not the finished article. But I’d like to think that we have goals from different areas on the team.”