Falcons edge Wego to claim back-to-back DVC wins

By Matt Le Cren

If you showed up a couple minutes late to the Wheaton North-West Chicago match Thursday night, you missed all of the scoring.

Wheaton North's Sam Klatt scored 80 seconds into the game and the host Falcons made it stand up for a 1-0 DuPage Valley Conference victory despite the fact that West Chicago dominated the possession for most of the match.

It was the second victory in as many days over a team with a better record for the Falcons (3-7-2, 2-1-1), who won consecutive games for the first time this season.

Klatt's goal, his team-leading seventh of the season and second in as many outings, was a classic case of cherry-picking.

Andrew Carlsburg's corner kick went straight into the middle of the box to Henok Russell, whose shot was definitely heading into the goal. But just to be sure, Klatt re-directed from just inside the left post.

"That was kind of lucky," Klatt admitted. "When you're in the right place at the right time, I think other people are opening things up and you've just got to be there.

"Like that was on a re-start, so I've got to [be] on the post and that's where I was."

The goal gave North confidence that Wednesday's 2-1 upset of Wheaton Warrenville South was not a fluke.

"When you start off the game big, it gives [your opponent] a different perspective of what's going to happen and we proved it," Klatt said. "We played better, we played harder and we deserved it."

But it didn't come without a huge effort from defenders Zac Gudanik, Zack Andor, Dan O'Malley and Gareth Phillips, who found themselves under nearly constant pressure for long stretches.

West Chicago (4-7-2, 1-2-1) dominated the midfield thanks to Richard Paret, Diego Munoz and Giovanni Gomez, who had vast amounts of space to work with.

That's why West Chicago coach Steve Brugmann, whose team was coming off a 4-3 overtime loss to West Aurora in which the Wildcats blew a 3-1 lead and gave up the tying goal with 15 seconds left, was feeling pretty good about things at halftime.

"I really felt like we were moving the ball great and defensively we fixed what was broken last night," Brugmann said. "We had a rough time last night. We couldn't quite stick with our marks and tonight it was just the opposite.

"I think everybody stayed focused and mentally on top of their game and did a real nice job back there and then moving the ball through the midfield. It was just finding the final flick that was going to put one in the back of the net."

Brugmann asked his players at intermission if they were happy about the score. They said no. He then asked if they were happy with their play. They said yes.

"And that was the way it felt," he said.

The visitors continued to have the better of the play after the break, but it was the Falcons who had the best scoring chance.

It came with 9:00 left when a ball bounced over the head of West Chicago goalie Adrian Porcayo, who made five saves, and was tracked down by North's West Eck, who fended off a defender and headed the ball toward the open net but it caromed off the crossbar.

Other than that, the action was all down the other end. With Jenaro Terrazas making dangerous runs from the wing and senior defender Christopher Quintana coming up to launch numerous free kicks, the Wildcats had the North defenders back on their heels.

But the Falcons headed or booted most of the balls out of danger and the ones they didn't were stopped by goalie Nick Barry, who made seven saves in recording his second shutout.

"Nick came up tremendous for us again tonight," Wheaton North coach Bryce Cann said. "He keeps us in games and that's really important for us."

The play of Gudanik was just as important. The senior, who was sporting a bruised abdomen suffered when he was kneed, headed out each of West Chicago's final three serves into the Falcons' box.

"We played a good quality team and we stuck with them and didn't give up," Gudanik said. "Giving up a goal was not in our heads. We just wanted to push and get the second [goal]."

While the second goal never came, the shutout did and that was why Cann was not upset that the Wildcats controlled the midfield.

"We knew it was going to be a fight," Cann said. "West Chicago always plays us tough. I thought we did a good job staying patient. We didn't jump in too often.

"They're a skilled team on the ball and you've got to be patient as best you can and I felt we did a pretty good job of that in back."

"Our defense played great," Klatt said. "We knew we could be better than [our record] and our motto is 'Family.'

"We need to play as a family and be a team and when we play together and play hard and give it all we've got, this is what happens."

For West Chicago, the match provided an answer as to whether the Wildcats would let Wednesday's defeat affect them mentally. Brugmann said the strong effort showed strong character.

"We've got to learn from our mistakes," Quintana said. "We had some errors last night with the marking and then we did much better tonight. With a 1-0 loss, [North's goal] was in the beginning, but we still held in and we still kept fighting for it.

"During our practices we're going to work on our mistakes. Tonight we had most of the possession of the game. We went for every 50-50 ball and our players did well. They tried to fight for a goal and it just didn't happen tonight."