Red Devils fall in overtime to visiting OPRF

PHOTO GALLERY COURTESY OF HARRISON BULL
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By Matt Le Cren

After his team dropped its West Suburban Conference Silver Division opener 4-3 to York last Tuesday, Oak Park and River Forest coach Paul Wright knew that a 0-2 start might be too big of a hole to dig out of if the Huskies wanted to win the conference championship.

And when Hinsdale Central sophomore midfielder Darby Moran scored with 38:16 remaining in the second half to give the host Red Devils a 1-0 lead Tuesday, it certainly appeared OPRF had a mountain to climb.

But like the gopher in the movie Caddyshack, the Huskies are hard to bury. They were feeling all right and then some after rallying to beat Hinsdale Central 2-1 in overtime on a goal by Emily Gullo.

“We came out and battled,” Wright said. “I felt these girls kind of had a chip on their shoulders from when we lost against York and that hurt us big-time in sectional seeding. And with a loss here we’re really digging ourselves a big ditch to try to get out of.”

None of the Huskies had a bigger chip than Gullo, who thought she had scored the game-winner with 30 ticks left in regulation when she ran onto a long ball from Shelby Cozette and used some nifty dribbling to get around Hinsdale Central goalie Riley Glenn before poking home a five-yard shot.

The goal was disallowed when Gullo was ruled offsides, which appeared to be the correct call.

“I disagree completely,” Gullo said.

In the end, Gullo made it a moot point when she headed home a corner kick from fellow senior Sara McCall with 29 seconds left in the extra session. It was Gullo’s 12th goal of the season, half of which have been set up by McCall, who has seven assists.

“It’s what we work on,” Gullo said. “Just since freshman year, every time Sara’s got great crosses I always get on it. She’s very underestimated and sometimes underappreciated, but she absolutely has got the most fabulous crosses. Whenever you need them, [they are there].”

Even though he has witnessed the McCall-to-Gullo connection countless times, Wright is still in awe when they team up on a goal.

“The crosses [Sara] puts in are unbelievable on those set pieces,” Wright said. “And Emily’s not afraid to head the ball, she’s not afraid to get up in the air and try things.”

So how does this connection work so well?

“I guess it’s magic,” Gullo said with a smile.

“I don’t know what it is,” McCall said. “It’s funny that you mention this combination thing because it doesn’t work when she’s not up there. She’s got to be playing forward. When she’s playing in the center of the field we’re missing something.”

The Huskies (7-3-1, 1-1) were missing something in the first half, which was controlled by Hinsdale Central. The game was scoreless at intermission, but only because of the outstanding play by Huskies senior goalie Darcy Hargadon, who made four of her eight saves before the break.

The Red Devils (5-4-2, 1-1) brought an increasing amount of pressure in the 15 minutes leading up to the break. Hargadon dove to knock a 22-yard shot by sophomore Jenn Jarmy around the right post with 3:15 left, then made an even bigger stop at the 1:45 mark.

Hinsdale Central’s Drea Issleib hit the right post with a 29-yard free kick and the rebound went straight to Jarmy, whose point-blank shot was knocked wide of the post by a diving Hargadon. Mallory Feinstein also had a great chance to break the ice but Hargadon dove to her right to parry that hard shot around the post with 11 seconds to go.

“We didn’t take advantage when we had the wind in the first half,” said Hinsdale Central coach Skip Begley, whose club had its five-game unbeaten streak ended. “I think that was the key. Their goalkeeper kept them in the game the first half, made some great saves, and we could have maybe had a couple [goals] in the first half and we didn’t get them.”

The Red Devils did get one just 1:44 into the second half when Moran tallied her third goal of the year, using her left foot to fire a 27-yard rocket over the outstretched fingers of Hargadon and into the upper left corner of the net.

But the hosts could not sustain the momentum and the Huskies slowly turned the tide in their favor. Glenn, a freshman, withstood most of the pressure to finish with seven saves and Central’s young defenders, especially sophomore Casey May and freshman Meghan Schick, held their own in the cold, rainy conditions.

OPRF nearly tied it with 23:00 left when Katrina Vogel intercepted a goal kick and hit the right post with a 15-yard shot. The ball caromed untouched through the crease before Schick booted it out of trouble.

But the visitors got the equalizer at the 14:17 mark on a goal by Kate McCole. McCole’s 23-yard shot was tipped into the underside of the crossbar by a leaping Glenn, who then had the ball hit off her back. Despite a valiant effort, she was unable to stop the ball from crossing the goal line.

“The conditions were hard, but I think we were dominating a lot of the game,” Moran said. “It was just unlucky. They really picked up the pressure, especially in the overtime, and I guess we didn’t have as much composure as we should have.”

The Huskies did have composure and attacked relentlessly over the last 20 minutes of regulation and in the overtime, when they outshot the Red Devils 4-0.

“I felt the first 10 minutes [of the game] worked and then we just sort of got in the lull of the game,” Wright said. “We stopped pressuring the ball. We let them turn. We let them come at us and at halftime I said, ‘you can’t do that.’

“We told them to keep on pressuring the ball, don’t back off, they’re going to make mistakes and as you can see, toward the last 15 minutes of the second half [that’s what happened].”

The nullified goal at the end of regulation also played a big role in getting the Huskies fired up.

“I think it was that goal that got taken away from us, absolutely,” McCall said. “The weather was the motivation too, to get off the field.”

Though the Silver race is still wide open, the Red Devils missed a chance to take an early lead as well continue to build momentum into a grueling stretch of the schedule that includes a match Wednesday against reigning state champion Waubonsie Valley on the opening night of the Naperville Invitational that will sorely test their defense.

“They’re getting better,” Begley said. “Four of our five starters in the back are freshmen or sophomores and we’re playing two more sophomores up in the midfield with Moran and [Katie] Camden, so we’re kind of young, but we’re making progress. We’ll keep showing up. I don’t think our kids will back down. It’s a little different look the next couple weeks, so we’ll have to see what we’re made of.”