North Stars are all business in senior day win over Bulldogs

By Darryl Mellema

There were the usual Senior Day festivities prior to Saturday's Batavia-St. Charles girls soccer contest at St. Charles North.

The North Stars seniors were introduced and ran through a tunnel of teammates prior to the game and, of course, there were balloons in school colors to decorate the team bench.

During warm-ups, the team had that relaxed air about it.

But then the match started and North scored within the first minutes of the game and there suddenly the North Stars looked like the on-field juggernaut they have been throughout the 2010 campaign.

They never had a serious let-down and claimed a 4-0 victory in the regular season finale for both teams.

"We go into every game serious," North senior Paige Dusek said. "We don't take any game lightly and we don't think any team's a joke.

"We try to treat every game like it's for the championship, whether we end up beating them 12-0 or if we're playing a strong team like Waubonsie (Valley)."

The victory ends a 17-1-1 regular season for the North Stars. The only blemishes on the record were a 2-1 loss to Waubonsie Valley and a scoreless tie with Neuqua Valley.

"They're competitive people by nature, but the team as a whole, they like to win," North coach Ruth Vostal said.

"They like to fight. They know our goal wasn't necessarily to win, but it was to get better and get ready for our playoff game coming up."

Leah DeMoss scored the North Stars' opening goal in those early moments of Saturday's match.

"We went in kind of goofing around," DeMoss said. "But then we went in there and realized this was a serious game.

"We wanted to score the first goal. We wanted to finish it. We wanted to win on our senior night, so this was good."

Dusek scored twice, once in the first half and then the match-killing goal 10 minutes into the second half.

"This year has probably been my best year for scoring," Dusek said. "I don't know how many I have and it doesn't matter as long as pull through and we win.

"I've gotten opportunities and somehow they've ended in the back of the net."

The second goal was the most important in terms of match play, though Dusek wanted to talk more about Sammy Gage's pass than she did the shot from shot from which she scored.

"Sam had a great ball to me," Dusek said. "It was great ball placement. All I had to do was tap it in. Everyone goes to the goal scorers because they're ones who make it look like they make it happen.

"But really it's how the play develops, who has the assists and how the play develops before the goal that matter just as much. It's not just about the goal scorer."

Kristen Brown finished the scoring with 15 minutes to play in the match.

"We knew they didn't have some of their players," Dusek said. "We wanted to keep playing hard so they wouldn't think we beat them just because they didn't have those people.

"We wanted them to know that we'd beat them either way and that we come to play soccer."

The thought of not letting up on opponents becomes even more important now as all the state's girls soccer teams head into the postseason.

All any team is guaranteed is 80 minutes of postseason play, even a top-ranked team like St. Charles North.

"If you let down for one game, you might get used to it," Dusek said. "Then you may start thinking 'oh, I don't have to make this run to get back now.'

"And then that might end up being the game-winning shot, and it's your fault. So we want to be prepared 100 percent. We know we're in shape and ready and can play against any team we come up against."

St. Charles North enters the postseason on Wednesday in the first round of the IHSA Class 3A Hoffman Estates Regional. The North Stars face the host school in a 4:30 p.m. match.

"It went quickly, this regular season," DeMoss said. "I can't believe we're already to Senior Night. All four years, you're thinking you have so much time.

"But walking through the tunnel before the game, you're thinking 'wow, it's really here.' It's an emotional thing, but everyone has to go through it."

Should the North Stars defeat Hoffman Estates, they face either Batavia or Bartlett for the regional title on Friday.

But no one on North's team is likely to look very far ahead. A year ago, the North Stars steamed into the regional title game as favorites against Geneva and lost.

"We came into this game setting some goals like we would in any other match," Vostal said. "We said that we wanted to get better going into the playoffs.

"We shuffled up our lineup and we didn't run our usual set pieces. Some of that was senior recognition. But some of it was that we had some things we wanted to work on, and we did that."

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