Bulldogs fall 3-1 to visiting West Aurora
By Matt Le Cren

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In a perfect world, West Aurora would score first in every game and cruise to victory.

That hasn’t been the case in the early going, but it hasn’t stopped the Blackhawks from getting off to a good start.

Despite trailing in each of their first three matches, the Blackhawks are unbeaten, improving to 2-0-1 with a 3-1 comeback victory over host Batavia on Wednesday night.

“In all three games we were down,” said West Aurora coach Joe Sustersic, whose team was smaller yet scrappier than the Bulldogs. “What I like about these guys is they don’t care what the score is.

“All 11 [Batavia] guys are taller than anyone we had but these guys don’t care what the score is; they don’t care what the scenario is. They’re going to fight.”

And fight back they did after Batavia (3-0) took an early 1-0 lead on a bizarre goal by David Curnock with 28:18 left in the first half.

A West Aurora defender passed the ball back to goalie Alex Guillen, but Guillen’s clearing attempt hit Curnock in the face and caromed directly into the net.

“It was just a hustle goal,” Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco said. “David is definitely very good at the hustle goals. He’ll go after it in the 18.”

But it didn’t take long for the visitors to respond. Sophomore Jose Gallegos equalized 2:30 later by ramming home a header into the upper left corner of the net. It was the first career varsity goal for Gallegos, who played on the freshman squad last year.

“He’s hit a few posts,” Sustersic said. “I told him he had the green light to shoot when he had the shot. That goal that he scored was, holy cow, an upper 90 on a redirection.”

Junior Zak Flynn got the assist on the play, winning a loose ball in the box and lofting the ball across the crease to Gallegos on the right post for a short but powerful header.

“It feels good, the joy that it gave me,” Gallegos said. “Right when I saw the ball coming I just went for it. Nothing was going to stop me.”

Nothing, even the early deficit, was going to stop the Blackhawks from winning.

“We were playing sleepy and the team always starts slow, but we always know how to come back,” Gallegos said. “We just passed the ball. We wanted to have control, we wanted to get them tired and we dominated them.”

Indeed, the Blackhawks gradually wore down the Bulldogs as the game went along, using their quickness and passing to control the play. Batavia (0-3) missed a few shots over the crossbar early in the second half, including a half-volley from 16 yards out by Adam Heinz that barely missed the pipe with 34:30 left.

That would be Batavia’s last chance to take the lead and four minutes later Steve Rivera bagged what turned out to be the game-winner when he took a feed down the right wing from Manny Gurrola and beat Bulldogs goalie Michale Rueffer with a shot just inside the left post at the 30:07 mark.

Senior midfielder Juan Cerda added an insurance goal with 12:41 to go on a similar play. Daniel Rotolo triggered this one with a lead pass to Cerda on the right wing, and the result was an 18-yard shot that bounced into the net off the underside of the crossbar.

“We did [it with] passing,” Rivera said. “Manny said he was open so we gave the ball to him. We just have to play as a team to keep everybody up, like talk and tell everybody how we feel so we play as a team.”

Those two goals came on rare breakdowns by a Batavia defense that otherwise did a good job of slowing down West Aurora’s attack. Sweeper Nick Samperi blocked a pair of shots and Brendan Allen also impressed, sliding to knock a ball out of danger.

“We got caught out of position and we made bad passes and that’s where we were getting countered on, where we have obvious passes to play a ball and we didn’t complete those passes,” Gianfrancesco said. “[The Blackhawks] are definitely quick and they use each other really well. We need our guys to use each other really well. We work on it. It’s just applying it in a game.”

The Bulldogs have applied it at times, but like sunscreen, consistent use is required to avoid getting burned.

“I thought we looked great in the first 10 minutes and the first 10 minutes of the second half we looked good moving the ball around,” Gianfrancesco said. “I just think we get a little stagnant moving off the ball.

“We get opportunities to get in. We get opportunities to shoot and we don’t.
We’re kind of hesitating so the offensive third has got to get a little better.

“I think we did a good job at times of switching the field. [Junior forward] Zak Grahovec does a nice job distributing up there and holding the ball for us. When we did that we looked pretty good. But it’s just what do we do with the ball in the final third and that’s where we’ve got to get better. You’re seeing glimpses there but it comes down to consistency.”

The hardest thing for Gianfrancesco so far is getting his players to be patient.

“It’s hard to tell a high school kid ‘don’t look at the record,’ because that’s what they’re going to look at,” he said. “You get 0-3 you’re like, ‘Oh, geez, it’s a problem.’ But to tell a high school boy specifically to be patient, it’s kind of hard. They want the result. They want to get the ‘W’ and I understand that.”