Spartans post sixth shutout in seven games
By Dave Miller

 

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So far this season, chances are good St. Francis will win if it scores.

The Spartans started Saturday owning six victories in seven games with each win coming on a shutout.

So you can guess how the rest of the afternoon unfolded when St. Francis scored less than three minutes into its match. Indeed, the trend continued as the host Spartans blanked Glenbard South 3-0 in nonconference action in Wheaton.

It was a breakthrough performance for Sydney Fox. The senior scored twice, including that first goal when Fox took a centering pass from Andrea Ravlin and punched the ball into the right side of the goal to give her team a 1-0 lead.

Fox’s second goal came in the 53rd minute with help from Anna Vonderhaar, who dribbled by two defenders on the left side before passing the ball to Fox near the front of the goal. Fox took her time and booted the ball past Glenbard South goalkeeper Dana Jourdan to put the Spartans up 3-0.

It was the first two goals of the season for Fox, who had been putting pressure on herself to score.

“In the beginning of the season I’ve really been struggling to score, but going into the game I said, ‘I’m just going to play and see what happens,’” Fox said. “Then I got the opportunity so when I shot it and made it I was like, ‘All right, this is awesome!’ The second one I was like, ‘I’m just going to keep going.’ I’m just glad I got ’em.”

Fox described scoring as a relief.

“It was good,” she said with a smile. “Once I got that first one…they’re starting to come now. That happened last season, too.”

The Spartans were the aggressor for most of the first half. They gave Glenbard South (2-7) trouble with their speed and hustle.

The Raiders perked up in the final 10 minutes of the half. They produced three scoring chances in that span, the best being Jenna Brambora’s shot from in front of the goal, but the attempt traveled wide right.

The action intensified in the second half and St. Francis titled the match even more in its direction. Sarah Rahman blistered a shot from near the center of the box. Jourdan got a good chunk of it with both her hands, but the ball trickled into the right side of the goal, putting the home team ahead 2-0 in the 48th minute.

Five minutes later, Fox became one of a handful of Spartans to score two goals on the season.

“Part of the way we do things, and how I like to see things, is getting production from a lot of different people,” St. Francis coach Jim Winslow said.

And not just on the offensive end. Recording all of your wins on shutouts isn’t an accident. It starts with goalkeeper Jenna DiTusa, but doesn’t end there. Back-line defenders Meghan Wagner and Kate Roback anchor a team-wide commitment to defense.

“We defend as a group,” Winslow said. “The kids up top do a good job defending, the kids in the middle are doing a good job defending and the kids in back are very good and don’t make many mistakes. On top of it, I’ve got, if not the best, one of the best goalkeepers in the state. The kids love Jenna. They enjoy her, and because of her comfort level and their comfort level with her, they don’t worry about making mistakes because she’ll clean up the mess.”

“I’m very fortunate this year with the defense we have, so I’m not going to take all the credit obviously,” DiTusa said. “We’re just looking to keep it solid all year. The field conditions were not ideal today. Just coming from Thursday we had to clean up a lot of stuff. We’re getting pretty good technically now, so I think we just need to keep moving forward with that, and eventually we’ll get where we want to be.

“There’s probably more dirt than grass right now. We have to get used to it. We’d ideally like to play somewhere else, away probably, but we’ll try to make due in the meantime.”

Winslow liked what he saw from his players.

“We had kind of a rough go on Thursday night,” he said. “I wasn’t really happy with just our overall focus and energy. I was much happier with that. In the first half it was good and then it fell off a little bit, and that’s going to happen. And then in the second half when the game started to get a little bit more intense we raised our level of play a whole ’nother step. That’s what I really liked. And on this surface, it’s amazing they do what they do. They’re fun to watch.”