Blackhawks in yet another DVC pressure cooker
Overtime goal gets win over WW South

 

By Darryle Mellema

You want drama in a boys soccer match? Then the team you need to have been following this fall hails from West Aurora.

The Blackhawks have played a number of tight ballgames – the latest coming Tuesday, when an own-goal in the second overtime allowed them to defeat Wheaton-Warrenville South in the DuPage Valley Conference finale for both teams.

The win marked the fourth time this season that West Aurora took its only lead of the game on a game-winning goal.

There had previously been a penalty kick victory over Juarez and overtime wins against Wheaton North and Glenbard East. Add a 1-0 overtime loss to Naperville North, and there has been plenty of nail-biting to be done in Blackhawks’ matches this fall.

“This is our last home game and we decided to do what we had to do,” West Aurora junior Josue Martinez said.

After the victory, West Aurora’s players gathered in the north goal and then celebrated their victory, the end of their regular season and began to look toward the postseason. Next week, the Blackhawks (16-5-1, 4-3 DVC) travel to the West Chicago Regional.

“All seven games we’ve played in the DVC have been decided by one goal,” West Aurora coach Joe Sustersic said. “Every game was decided in the last minute. This is nothing new.”

While both teams struggled to forge clear scoring chances on Tuesday, the goals scored in the regulation 80 minutes were both things to remember.

First came Dan Tomazin’s opener for Wheaton-Warrenville South (7-11-3, 1-6), a 35-yard chip over the goalkeeper, under the crossbar and into the side netting. That goal came with 13 minutes left in the first half.

Had South’s Max Carey doubled the lead when he hit a crisp shot 3 minutes before halftime, there is a chance the overtime drama might never have happened.

But West Aurora keeper Abel Diaz saved Carey’s shot and that set the stage for Martinez to level the scores with a 30-yard shot from nearly the same place on the field as Tomazin. Martinez saw an opening and hit a rifled shot into the left side netting.

“They always tell me to shoot and I’m not the type of person who shoots a lot,” Martinez said. “I just decided to take it and it worked out.”

A brief glance at the Wheaton Warrenville South goalie helped Martinez pick his target.
“I saw that the goalie was moving towards me,” Martinez said. “I realized that if I put it over him and curl it a little bit, it’ll go in. I took it and it worked.”

There still weren’t many chances for either team to win the match in regulation play, but the Blackhawks played more evenly with the Tigers in the second 40 after struggling with the visitors some in the opening half.

“We’ve had a chance to win every single game,” Martinez said. “It’s just that we don’t always come out here to play our game – where we’re confident and prepared. Today, in the first half, we weren’t prepared. But in the second half, we were prepared.”

The first overtime swung wildly between the two teams. West Aurora dominated early, getting a pair of good shots on goal. Then the Tigers replied.

But the second overtime – which only lasted 77 seconds – showed the Blackhawks moving confidently toward what ended as the game-winning tally.

Within seconds of the kickoff, Cesar Garcia passed to Martinez, who fed Mike Vazquez in the left corner. Vazquez drove the ball low through the 6-yard box and out of reach of Wheaton-Warrenville South’s defenders and goalkeeper. A covering defender stretched a leg as the ball moved through the goalmouth and sent the ball into the net.

By high school rules, Vazquez gets credit for the own goal as he was the last Blackhawks player to touch the ball.

“Mike Vazquez put the ball in play,” Sustersic said. “I’ve said many times that we can’t score if we keep passing the ball on the outsides. Sometimes you’ve got to put the ball in the mixer and see what happens. He mixed it in there and gets an own goal, gets the goal for the game and sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.”