Cougars see winning streak halted in shutout loss to rival Wildcats

 

CLICK HERE FOR PLAINFIELD SOUTH'S TEAM PAGE

 

By Bill Scheibe

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, fearless is as fearless does. While playing center midfielder at 5-foot-3 on a good day, Plainfield Central junior Britney Lenza brings fearless to the forefront with every single pass.

The converted defender displayed little fear Thursday, going on the attack to forcefully win the 50-50 battles for a pair of shoulder-high balls – flicking feeds each time to senior forward Bailey Wysocki. And within 10 minutes of the first half, Lenza had put the exclamation point on the age-old combination.

Big things. Small packages.

"You have to be aggressive," said Lenza, who was a tower of power in the assist department. "You have to get the ball and see where it is, and I saw Bailey there right away. She's always open, she's always running and I see her all the time, so I had to play those balls to her up top and she always gets them in."

Sounds like a simple formula, but Lenza figured it out better than Einstein in setting up Wysocki for similar back-to-back goals. Senior goalkeeper Janna Pascente then made 11 saves for the shutout as the visiting Wildcats coasted to a 2-0 Southwest Prairie Conference win over district rival Plainfield South.

Although Central (5-6-1, 2-2-0) snapped a six-game winning streak by South (8-3-1, 2-1-0), it might have been a case of winning the battle and losing the war. Wysocki, the Saginaw Valley State recruit, left with a sprained knee after scoring her second goal. An MRI is scheduled for today.

It was the goal that proved to be the game-changer as well, with junior midfielder Lauren Kulaga working the ball up to Lenza, who settled the high bouncer and landed a pass over the defense. Wysocki buried a wicked shot around the right post before slamming into junior goalkeeper Taylor Schwebke.

And the MRI?

"We'll see how that goes," said Wysocki, who has scored 10 goals in her last four games. "I hope I'm not out too long. And I honestly don't know what happened. I was just trying to score, I had it, and I knew I could get it. That's all I was thinking about, and I collided with the keeper. She ran right through me."

Unfortunately, it was one of those soccer plays inside the box where both have the right to the ball. Schwebke (7 saves) barely missed cutting off the angle and in the process stopping the shot, which gave the Wildcats a handy 2-0 cushion only 9:49 into the first half. Wysocki's presence was already felt.

"That was nice," Central coach Ken Schoen said of the two-goal edge. "I think once Bailey went out, we probably didn't keep possession as much as we were in the beginning, but I thought we started to settle down and carried it over into the second half and limited their opportunities pretty well."

"Give them credit," South coach Kevin Allen said. "They wanted it more. They put their two chances away in the first half from a top-notch forward, and we didn't. We played like we were scared to challenge them, we let them win the 50-50 balls, and it almost looked like it was our first game."

This game was barely three minutes old, 2:55 to be exact, when Lenza punched a perfect pass ahead from the circle of the box to Wysocki. She split the defense and delivered a bullet-like shot through the seam that eluded the diving gloves of Schwebke into the lower-right corner for the 1-0 advantage.

"Those were fantastic finishes by Bailey," Schoen said. "Really, we had two opportunities in the first half and she converted on both of them. And, yeah, Lenza is good there. She was a center back at the start of the season, but she's an attack-minded player and she sets us up well being there at center mid."

"It all started with Lauren, who played it to Britney and Britney to me," Wysocki said. "Definitely, both were great balls by Britney. After the first goal, we started to play with even more energy, we settled down and we were like, 'Oh, we got this.' And it was good to get that second goal to help us out."

Afterward, Schoen praised Pascente, pointing out that "I would say she played one of her best games of the year. She was flawless." Meanwhile, Pascente also received a little help from her friend the crossbar, coming on a direct kick by sophomore midfielder Alex Truhlar a mere 4:54 into the second half.

"Well, I thought I had a chance, but their goalkeeper is good at jumping and she just magically jumped and got it," Truhlar said, noting that Pascente poked the shot off the crossbar. "I thought maybe she would have knocked it down and somebody could get a rebound, and I was hoping it would go in."

While Truhlar had another direct kick that Pascente erased with a leaping save, this time with 22:28 left in the second half, the Cougars' best sequence occurred in the final five minutes of the first half.

Freshman forward Kelsey Pruett was thwarted on a powerful point-blank shot before Pascente smothered the rebound attempt of freshman midfielder Kayla Rice off a deflected cross from Truhlar.

So close. So far.

"Yeah, I don't think we did as well as we could – we could have done a lot better," Pruett said. "After the second goal, we're not the type of team that just gives up. We're not going to give up just because they scored another goal. We knew we had a chance to catch up because we felt we were the better team."

"We told girls many times that the 2-0 lead is the worst in soccer," Allen said. "We get the next one in and we have the momentum, but we couldn't put our chances away when we had them. We possessed the ball, but weren't creating enough chances, and when we did, we couldn't put any of them away."

With senior Kelsey Graefen, junior Jessica Kaminski and sophomores Lisa Schroeder, Jessica Munkvold and Melissa Del Sarto putting up a brick wall in front of Pascente, it allowed Lenza to let loose alongside Kulaga in the midfield. And the nifty Lenza, all of 5-3, heated up with two assists on a chilly afternoon.

"I've been playing defense, but I think I can do it," she said. "I feel like I work the ball well and I like it. I've always seen the field well, and I look at playing the center-mid position as a plus. It works."

For her. And for the Wildcats.