Bulldogs find simplicity in a 4-1 win over West Aurora

 

By Darryl Mellema

All those brainwaves being overly exercised on Wednesday by Batavia’s soccer players ended with one 11-man mainframe getting unbelievably overloaded.

Fortunately, the system never crashed. But clearly the Rene Descartes approach to the sport “congito ergo score” (I think, therefore I score) wasn’t working as the Bulldogs walked off at halftime leading West Aurora only 1-0 and having scored on their only shot in 40 minutes.

“The first thing I said to them (at halftime) was ‘lucky we’re up 1-0 because it shouldn’t be that way,’” Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco said.

Cam Callipari had that goal, a solid long-range effort that benefited as West Aurora’s goalkeeper never came to grips with the shot after it was hit.

So the Bulldogs switched off their brains a little more in the second half and let their instincts take over. The result was an emphatic 4-1 victory.

“It was really that we had to keep it simple,” Gianfrancesco said. “We were thinking too much and we weren’t communicating very well. I think we did that much better in the second half.”

What the Bulldogs were thinking in that first 40 minutes was how to go about carving through the Blackhawks defense. Ironically, the less they thought about it and the more they just played the ball to each other, the easier that task became.

“We weren’t capitalizing on our opportunities because we were trying to build for something extraordinary,” Batavia senior Anton Kondaurov said. “We decided in the second half that we were just going to play ‘simple.’”

“Simple” does not mean “stupid,” There was great movement and instinct shown on Batavia’s second goal, just under 2 minutes into the second half. Breaking quickly from a broken West Aurora attack, the Bulldogs swept from end to end of the field and scored when Cody Witkowski took Batavia’s second shot of the match.

“We were a lot more composed and we were knocking it around more,” Gianfrancesco said. “It seemed like we had a lot more counter attacks.”

That goal ushered the best minutes of the match for the hosts. Cody Balogh curled a shot narrowly wide from the top of the penalty area and Sam Schlicher combined with Kondourov on another promising move.

“Those first minutes of the half are key for setting the tempo,” Kondaurov said. “We definitely came out strong, capitalized on it and then took it and had a good second half.”

That pressure eventually led to Batavia’s third goal, scored in the 18th minute of the half by Kondourov. The ball came to him thanks to an overhead kick by Evan Christianson. Kondaurov scored with a deft back flick header.

“We capitalized on our opportunities,” Kondaurov said. “I just did a little redirect, and it was a goal. I was just going for the corner.

The game became quite wide open at that point and West Aurora pulled back a goal two minutes after Konourov’s goal when Roberto Chavez tallied.

West Aurora’s revival lasted 18 minutes before Sam Schlicher scored Batavia’s fourth goal.

The season is still young and Batavia is 1-1-1, though some aspects of the team’s demeanor are beginning to shine through.

“We definitely have a talented group,” Kondourov said. “The first couple of games, we were figuring out how we were each going to play our positions. Now we’re showing what we’ve got.”

Complementing seniors like Kondaurov and Schlicher is a series of juniors such as Witkowski, Callipari, Christianson, Anthony Torres and Eduardo Cuautle – to name a few of the 15 juniors on the Bulldogs’ roster.

“I think they’re looking pretty good,” Gianfrancesco said. “We’ve got a young core. A lot of these guys are just getting minutes now. We only had four starters returning so they’re just getting used to working with each other, the speed of play and the physical play. We’ve just got to keep building.”