Hawks focus on the positives from Pepsi Showdown

By Darryl Mellema

The easy thing would be for Bartlett to try to just look past Saturday's 5-1 defeat to Downers Grove North, a loss that concluded the Hawks' play at the Pepsi Showdown.

But Bartlett's a good team that's trying to get better, so every piece of input, even the negative results, prove worthwhile.

And there were moments of Saturday's game in LaGrange that Hawks coach Ben Beary definitely wanted his team to remember.

"Not only did we never give up – but you don't see too many offside traps in high school," Beary said. "And we were running it beautifully in the first half.

"It's a shame nobody told the ref that was what we were deciding to do because two of their goals were easily offside. But that's part of the game."

Downers North (6-3) rolled to a 4-0 halftime lead. Things changed in the second half as the Hawks tightened even further – though they had to overcome some obstacles in order to reach that point.

Midway through the half, Bartlett keeper Alex Busch went down in a collision and had to leave the match. Chris Baumann, a defender, took over in goal, wearing a pinny over his blue Bartlett jersey.

"We have a saying that we want to win the second half," Beary said. "We have an emergency keeper. We don't have a backup keeper. Even though the second half finished 1-1, I felt the second half was ours, easily."

Beary said his team never backed down from the challenge of trying to recover from that heavy deficit.

"I'm happy and proud of my guys," Beary said. "They came through with flying colors, in my opinion."

Bartlett played the match with three starters missing due to injury or other situations.

"With all that, besides, we rose," Beary said. "I think the second half today was one of our better second halves of the year."

The Hawks broke the shutout with 12 minutes left when Charlie Sordini scored.

"He got a great through ball from Fabio Aiello," Beary said. "When we get those opportunities, we have the skill to put them away.

"We haven't done that lately. The ball hasn't bounced our way. So it's nice to get one. You don't want to get shut out two games in a row."

Bartlett finished the Pepsi Showdown with a 3-2 record, winning its first three matches and then dropping its last two matches.

A busy week begins in the Upstate Eight Conference – starting with the U-46 rivalry match with Elgin on Tuesday, followed by a battle with Neuqua Valley on Thursday.

The Hawks compete next weekend in the Glenbrook North Tournament.

"It's been a huge lesson for us on a daily basis," Beary said. "I'll tell you what the tournament does is that it teaches you how to play as a team.

"We know that the games that we showed up thinking that we could take the game on ourselves, those are the games we ended up not playing so well."

Beary said his squad learned a lot about playing under pressure.

"You don't get pressure games like this anywhere else at this time of the season," Beary said.

"The great thing is that now we have the whole second half of our season to prep for the next time we run into these situations. You also get a chance to see these teams that you know will be there at sectionals that you wouldn't normally get to see otherwise."