Falcons edge Rams to advance to regional semifinals

 

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By Darryl Mellema

Prior to Saturday's IHSA opening-round match with Glenbard East, Wheaton North coach Bryce Cann made a remark about how he would be pleased at the end of the match if his team had scored a goal.

Cann wasn't demeaning his team or being overly funny, either. The Falcons had struggled mightily to score in the 2011 regular season, netting eight times in 18 matches.

But never did the words “second season” sound sweeter to a team, and host Wheaton North battled through a wild 2-1 victory over the Rams in the opening round of the Class 3A Schaumburg Regional.

Technically, Wheaton North players scored none of the goals in the match since both goals credited to the Falcons came off of Glenbard East players.

High school soccer does not credit own goals as such, so Brooks Joy and Sam Klatt were credited with their team's goals.

And really, it didn't matter if the shots had deflected off an imaginary force field in the Glenbard East penalty area.

The key was that they went into the back of the net and propelled the Falcons into Tuesday's regional semifinals against the top-seeded host Saxons.

“That's playoff soccer,” Cann said. “What we've talked about all year – because we've had a challenging year from the get-go – is being resilient.

"We talk about it and talk about it, and what we talked about is what you saw in the last three-and-a-half minutes. We found a way to get the ball into a dangerous area and then saw what happened.”

What happened, with only 1:08 left on in the match, was that Klatt drove a low ball into the penalty area from the left wing and the ball was aimed just outside the right post.

But when a Glenbard East defender slid to try to knock the ball out of bounds for a goal kick, the ball went into the back of the net to break a 1-1 tie. With such a short time remaining in the match, Klatt's goal was as good as a sudden-death winner.

“You hope that your guys are on the back end of that and you work to make sure that it's that way,” Cann said. “But if you put the ball into a dangerous area, good things will happen.”

Wheaton North (2-14-3) had led the match since Joy sent a free kick toward goal with 11 minutes left in the opening half. The ball skimmed off a Glenbard East player's head and ended in the back of the net.

That goal looked as if it might be the game-winner until Glenbard East (4-11-3) was awarded a penalty kick with 3:12 to play.

Gio Guerrero stepped up and converted and overtime looked inevitable – until Klatt's cross-shot ended in the back ot the net 2:04 later.

“We had some great opportunities to score,” Cann said. “Finding a way to continue creating those opportunities is key, and I felt we did a great job of continuing to find those opportunities.”

Klatt proved to be influential in the final quarter-hour of the match, and it was not surprising that he was the player who provided the ball into the penalty area that ended up as the match-winning goal.

“Sam's done a real nice job this year,” Cann said. “He's a real 'right place, right time' kind of player.

"Sometimes you notice it, and that means something good's happening. There are other times when he will be kind of under the radar and that's fine.”

Schaumburg is a tremendous challenge for the Falcons in the second round. But Cann said he feels his team will gain something from Saturday's win as it prepares to face the Saxons.

“We haven't had a whole lot of things go right this season,” Cann said. “But we always found a way to come back and at least be a little resilient. You saw that at the end of the match, when we had no real reason to play hard and we did.”

The elation that erupted from Wheaton North's players at the end of the match was the complete opposite to the emotions felt and displayed by Glenbard East's squad.

The team gathered in one corner of the field and talked. Then there were hugs between players and coaches and plenty of tears were shed.

“There's always that sting and that bite and that bitter taste that's left in your mouth,” Glenbard East coach Josh Adler said. “That's what the postseason's about. It's an emotional time. You've put a lot of time in, and not just the last three months.

"You've put time in last spring and in the summer and you learn to come together as a team and to fight for your team and then you work yourself to exhaustion like we did in the second half today to try to get the ball in to the net.

"Then you get that opportunity. And the deflation of watching that ball go into the back of the net, it's a shocker.”

Still, a Glenbard East team that trailed for nearly half the match failed to surrender and kept trying to find ways to attack the Falcons.

Adler shifted his formation to move his most attacking players as far forward as possible and the result came when Guerrero was pushed over in the penalty area and he then converted the penalty kick.

“The one thing I've preached to my guys is that you have to find a way to fight,” Adler said. “If you do that, you're going to stay in matches and give yourself a chance to gain things out of matches.

"That's a tough characteristic to teach kids and to get them to buy into the idea that it really is worth it to fight like that. I think, at the end of the day, my program always finds a way of seeing that, which is a testament to those kids. They're the ones who play the games.”

The devastation from allowing a goal after tying the match was made doubly-difficult because the Rams had literally no time to mount a recovery.

“It was entertaining and you want an exciting match,” Adler said. “What a finish for people to sit up there in the bleachers and see. They got to see high school soccer and why there's excitement about the game.”

Adler graduates a series of seniors who have meant much to the Glenbard East program.

“Kyle (Ricely) has been a real steady guy, the guy who sits in there in midfield and is smart and just tries to read the game well,” Adler said. “He's been a two-year starter for me. Tyler (Ford) has been a four-year player with the varsity and this was one of his best years, and that's what you want from a senior.

"Cody (Hallcox) was in the net most of the year and he was a kid who was converted into a goalkeeper. But he was willing to make that sacrifice. Ian (Leifheit) is a very skilled player and an emotional player. He cares a lot and wants to make something of every match. He brought a lot and was converted into being a defender.

"Some of these guys gave up so much for our team. Gabe Munoz spent the whole first half of the season as an injured player with an ACL issue and he kept working his way back and he ended up playing almost the entire second half today because he wasn't going to give up.

"And then you have Gio (Guerrero), who converted the penalty kick for us – and he is just a horse. He had his most consistent year in the back and that's why he was our Golden Boot winner today. There's a lot to be proud of.”