Storm fall in UEC Valley opener to East Aurora

By Curt Herron

After winning three straight matches to claim the Burlington Central Invite title last week, South Elgin looked to be in a good spot heading into this week's Upstate Eight Conference Valley Division play.

Helping the Storm's cause was the fact that Wednesday's match with East Aurora and Thursday's contest with Waubonsie Valley were home dates to be played at Streamwood's Millennium Field.

But while those factors seemed to lay the groundwork for a successful week for South Elgin, the Tomcats were happy to roll into town to spoil the party.

East Aurora did that by dominating the possession against the Storm, and although it took awhile before it led to any scoring, the visitors had plenty of close calls during the match.

South Elgin was able to hold the Tomcats off for nearly 63 minutes before East scored a pair of goals during a 6:54-span to grab a decisive 2-0 advantage.

Although the Storm got their first score with just under seven minutes remaining and just missed tying things on two occasions after that, the Tomcats captured a 2-1 victory.

While Storm coach John Uveges was pleased with how his squad battled back, he would liked to seen some of that same type of play happen much earlier in the match.

Uveges was also happy with the work of his two keepers, Jarod Schieler and Andrew Perry, who each played a half and did their best to prevent their team from falling behind earlier.

However, the first-year Storm coach was very unhappy with the disparity in possession between the squads, especially against a talented team like East Aurora.

And unless the Storm does a better job of possessing the ball, their coach realizes that they'll likely face more headaches during Thursday's match with Waubonsie.

Click to hear coach John Uveges interview

East Aurora finally broke through for its first score with 17:08 remaining in the match after the Storm (4-3, 0-1) had held off one threat after another throughout the afternoon.

Shortly before that, Perry had stopped a pair of short shots and Storm defenders Spencer Scott and Alberto Bustamante had cleared away two other potential scoring plays.

But following that latter sequence, there really wasn't much that anyone could do other than watch as Juan Bustamante connected to put the Tomcats ahead for good.

With just under 11 minutes left, the Storm had one of their initial second-half shots on goal but Bryan Irwin's grounder was stopped by keeper Norberto Sanchez.

It wasn't long before East Aurora found the net again following a goal from Abraham Kanneh to grab a 2-0 advantage with 10:14 remaining.

While that quick one-two punch would have staggered most opponents, the Storm seemed to do the opposite, finally coming to life as they faced a two-goal deficit.

Things got much more interesting with 6:57 to go when Phil Saccameno made a long run downfield, making several nice moves past defenders along the way, and connected.

That score began a frenzied comeback effort by the Storm which came very close to allowing the hosts to walk away from an apparent defeat with a draw.

Mike Kozielek had the first good attempt with 2:25 remaining but his close call was deflected away and resulted in a corner kick for the hosts.

Then with 1:45 left in the match, Alberto Bustamante sent a shot try that just went wide of the net and the Tomcats then ran out the rest of the clock.

Earlier in the second half, South Elgin looked like it might have grabbed a 1-0 lead with 31:30 left after Quinn Uveges scored, but the officials waved off the goal.

Then about 13 minutes into the final half, Uveges had another good chance to score, but his line drive attempt sailed wide of the net.

The Tomcats put plenty of pressure on Schieler on a series of restarts before the break, but the Storm keeper came up with several nice stops.

One of South Elgin's lone opening half highlights came shortly before the intermission when Kozielek sent a shot wide following a corner kick.