Huskies fall victim to Lions' pressure

 

By Matt Le Cren

There’s a little bit of the chicken-and-the-egg story to Horacio Sanchez.

Is the Lyons forward successful because his teammates feed him the ball in the correct spot, or are the Lions winning because Sanchez is usually in the right place at the right time?

It’s probably a little of both, though opposing teams really don’t care one way or the other because regardless of the answer, they often end up in the same place – sunk.

Such was the case Thursday night, when Sanchez scored two goals from short range – one with his feet and the other with his head – to lift host Lyons to a 2-1 victory over Oak Park and River Forest at Bennett Field in Western Springs.

The victory was the sixth straight for the Lions (14-1-2, 5-0), who secured at least a share of the West Suburban Conference Silver Division championship for the third consecutive year and fifth time in the past six seasons.

Sanchez has scored at least one goal in each of the last three matches and leads the Lions with 14.

“Some people say that I’m cherry picking,” Sanchez said. “Not to sound cocky, but I’ve played the game long enough that stuff like that can happen and it happens for me at the right times. Good thing it happened today because we needed that second goal to take conference.”

Though LT outplayed the Huskies (11-4-2, 3-2) throughout the match, the visitors were hanging tough defensively until Sanchez struck for the game-winner with 19:15 remaining in the second half when he rose up to head a long throw-in from Peter Kralovec-Kirchherr just inside the left post from six yards out.

“This is the second time ‘K.K.’ has put it right on my head,” Sanchez said. “I don’t know what else to ask from him. He’s doing his job and doing it well.

“He’s giving me goals so I appreciate that. It makes me look good and I want to make sure he looks good, too.”

In that they help each other. The Lions are blessed with many offensive weapons and Kralovec-Kirchherr, a senior defender, is quickly becoming another one with his strong, accurate throws. But he says the strategy with every toss is different; sometimes he’ll throw to a spot where he thinks a teammate will be and other times he will see a player already in place and try to get the ball to him.

“Throughout the season we’ve been able to predict where people are going and where people are going to be, so we try to find the people who we know can finish,” Kralovec-Kirchherr said.

That said, the No. 1 option is still Sanchez.

“We know he’s dangerous when he gets the ball in the box,” Kralovec-Kirchherr said. “Most people are, but him especially. He’s big and he was able to get that out of the air. We just look for the long throw and he was able to get his head on [the game-winner].”

Kralovec-Kirchherr also got an assist on Sanchez’s first strike, which gave the Lions a 1-0 lead at the 31:06 mark of the first half. He sent a long cross from deep in the left corner to Elliot Borge on the right side of the Huskies’ penalty area. Borge quickly found Sanchez in front of the net for a quick tap-in from four yards out.

“Anything can happen,” Sanchez said. “I try to see that as much as possible. Sometimes it’s there for me, sometimes it’s not. It happened twice for me today and I was luckily right at the spot where they made a mistake [on the first goal].”

“I was really impressed with them,” Oak Park forward Gian luca Locasto said. “I think they did really well. They got the ball in the middle and spread it out wide and that got them a lot of throw-ins and those throw-ins are really dangerous because they had so many shots.”

Locasto proved to be dangerous himself as he tied the game just two minutes later. The sophomore took an entry pass from Ryan Huettel and walked in alone on LT goalie Jeremiah Enright. Enright went down to stop Locasto’s point-blank shot but Locasto buried the rebound.

But that was to be the only good scoring chance for the Huskies, who were outshot 21-8 in losing their second league match in three days. They were coming off a 3-2 shootout loss at Downers Grove North on Tuesday, but didn’t show the same fire.

“I just don’t think our effort was there as much as it was on Tuesday night,” Locasto said. “It was unlucky that we didn’t win that, but we just couldn’t win any balls in the air here. They had a lot of big size.”

LT took advantage of its size, dominating the midfield with Borge, Kyle Kurfirst and Peter Gabrek. Oak Park coach Paul Wright thought Kelly Foran did well by sending several throw-ins into the LT box, but Kralovec-Kirchherr, Alex Economou, Matt Thomas and Kovas Zygas usually cleared the ball before any Huskies were able to get a head on it.

“We came out very flat,” Wright said. “We didn’t move the ball around. We defended very well for about a good 60 minutes, but we gave them, I counted, 23 throw-ins and corners. We didn’t follow our marks. We were very lax. 2-1 is a nice result but it could have been a lot worse.”

Indeed, the Lions had several other chances. Borge hit the right post with a 23-yard free kick on which he caught the Huskies unprepared, and Oak Park goalie Chris Ingvaldson made nine saves.

Then there was the officiating, which left both coaches scratching their heads. The strangest calls both went against the hosts. Kurfirst was knocked down in the penalty area but no foul was called, although that play led directly to the throw-in on which Sanchez scored the deciding goal.

Then Kralovec-Kirchherr was tripped in the box with 13:20 left and the referee awarded LT a penalty kick. But after Wright argued, the linesman 50 yards behind the play conferred with the ref and the foul was waved off. Incredibly, even though the ball had not gone out of bounds, the Lions were awarded a corner kick.

“It’s just the lack of consistency,” Wright said. “There were some calls that we should have gotten, [some] that they should have gotten. We got some lucky [breaks]; they got some lucky [breaks]. It’s just hard when it’s not consistent. It happens sometimes.”

At least the Huskies, who are seeded fifth at the Class 3A Argo Sectional, know they can play with the top teams they may see in the playoffs, having taken No. 3 seed Downers North to penalty kicks and the second-seeded Lions down to the wire.

“Now we know what we’re dealing with,” Locasto said. “We’ve just got to play harder and I think these games can be winnable games.”

The Lions discovered something too in Enright, a senior who was making just his second varsity appearance after backstopping LT’s undefeated JV team. Regular goalies Max Hadley and Kevin Beglen were unavailable.

“He’s a welcome addition,” Lyons coach Paul Labbato said. “He’s a young keeper, new to the position [with only a year or two of experience] but [this] summer his learning curve went straight up. He’s going to do just fine and he might play a lot of games.”