Lions top Downers North on Lauser's game-winner

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By Matt Le Cren

Soccer may be a universal sport, but soccer experiences are not universal.

Lyons Township junior Jon Jakob Lauser, a foreign exchange student from Stuttgart, Germany, found this out when he first took the pitch for the Lions.

In Germany, as is the case in most European countries, sports are not offered at the high school level. Athletes play with clubs, which are similar to American club teams. The experience is more individual than communal.

“There are no high school teams in Germany, so all my life I have played just soccer in club and it’s really a huge difference,” Lauser said. “[At German clubs if you make a mistake] you have to make it better or else they yell at you.

“Here they take it seriously, too, but here it’s really fun because you know the fans are cheering for you and the school, so it’s a really nice experience. I know all the players. It’s like playing with a whole bunch of friends.”

It’s easier to make friends when you play well, as Lauser has in cracking the starting lineup for the Lions. The midfielder has scored two goals, the second of which was his first career game-winner Tuesday in LT’s 1-0 West Suburban Conference Silver Division victory over Downers Grove North in Western Springs.

“We’ve moved him around a little bit,” Lyons coach Paul Labbato said. “We think we’ve found the right spot for him and he’s pretty dangerous in the center mid facing up to people.

“Brett [Heimerdinger] and Mark Pawula did a nice job of playing off him, those were our other center mids who were rotating in with him and around him, and they did a nice job of getting him the ball facing him up so he can go at people. Now we just have to work on where those forwards are running and the open spaces, just little things.”

The little things made the difference for Lauser Tuesday. After a sluggish first half in which neither side could sustain any momentum, the Lions (6-3-2, 1-1) broke through 2:39 into the second half.

Ben Larson sent a corner kick in from the right side that Downers North goalie Garrett Lems dove forward to punch away. The Trojans failed to clear and Lauser got the ball just outside the top of the box. His shot beat a retreating Lems into the lower left corner.

“I stopped it to the right side and shot through space to the left,” Lauser said. “The goalie could have gotten the ball because it slowed down because the grass really holds the ball, but it dropped really unluckily for the goalie just over his hands.”

Except for several headers that were either saved by Lems or flew harmlessly wide, that was the only real scoring opportunity for the Lions, a fact not lost on Lauser.

“It feels really good,” he said. “I felt it was a really important goal this time. The first time was [an] important goal too, but this time I wasn’t sure if we would have scored [another] goal today. We had to win this game.”

Indeed, though it was only their second league match, it was a must-win situation for the Lions because their league title hopes took an unexpected blow with last week’s 1-0 loss to Glenbard West.

“It was not a good game from either side,” Lauser said. “We did not have enough emotion in the game. We couldn’t find the intensity that we needed to make this a good game. In the end, we won 1-0 but we should have won [by a] higher [margin].”

Labbato agreed and felt the scoreless first half was a replay of the Glenbard West match. The Lions were without star midfielder Elliot Borge, who was serving a one-game suspension after receiving a red card in Sunday’s overtime loss to Libertyville in the Pepsi Showdown title game, but Labbato would not use that as an excuse.

“There’s just that first 40 minutes of kind of ‘blah’ and when you play kind of blah, you leave a team like Downers North [with an opportunity],” Labbato said. “They shorten the game. They got out of the first 40 minutes 0-0 so they shortened the game and then anything can happen.

“We did that against Glenbard West and to a lesser extent [in a 3-1 loss Aug. 31 to] St. Charles [East]. It’s a common theme and we need to fix it.”

Lauser said fatigue was at work in this game, the Lions’ third in four days.

“I think that the fact that we were still tired from Pepsi played a huge factor and also the field is not in the best condition after the Pepsi Showdown,” he said. “I hope this was just a little step backwards and we will have the intensity back after we recover. I think it is just because we are tired. Saturday and Sunday was overtime both [games].”

Therein lies another adjustment Lauser has had to make. Most club teams, on either side of the Atlantic, don’t play as frequently as high school teams do.

“[Lauser] is fitting in wonderfully,” Labbato said. “It’s a lot of soccer for someone who comes from a club environment of maybe two or three trainings a week and a game on Sunday. It’s different.

“We played two huge games over the weekend and they are a little bit beaten, a little tired, and I’d like to think we’re still everyone’s biggest game on their schedule or close to it, so we get everyone’s best effort. Downers North really worked hard in the center mid, they played some little passes in and out and tried to test us. They gave us a great effort.”

Indeed, the Trojans (3-10-1, 1-2) were successful in putting a renewed focus on defense, moving leading scorer Cullen Cummings from striker back to center midfield to counter LT’s five-man midfield. The hosts had nine shots but other than Lauser’s none were particularly dangerous. Lems stopped four shots, equaling Lyons keeper Max Hadley’s effort, and a few headers went harmlessly high and wide.

“We’ve been giving up a few extra goals lately, so we really kind of committed ourselves to not giving up goals today, so probably we were a little bit more blah than normal,” Gervase said. “Cullen was playing center mid, and did a great job. We had to take him out of where we like to play him, so we got ourselves a little out of our comfort zone, but we set a goal to come into this game and give up [only] a goal, so we should feel very good about ourselves.”

It was only the second time this season the Trojans have surrendered less than two goals in a match. An inexperienced back line that has been without top defender Zack Parik for over a week because of a knee injury and new goalies Lems and Aaron Menyes have given up 38 goals in 14 matches. Parik is the team’s best long thrower, so that takes away a good offensive weapon.

The Trojans mustered only five shots against the Lions but nearly tied the game on what would have been a spectacular goal with 3:40 remaining. Hugo Pacheco launched a 45-yard pass from the midfield to a streaking Cummings in the box. Cummings fully extended to get his foot on the ball but his volley missed the right post.

“I thought this was a good effort,” Gervase said. “We had a lot of good individual efforts today but we’re just still short on a full 11.

“We need to finish a higher percentage of our really good opportunities. We’ve had some really good opportunities and even today we had three what I would call sitters that [should be] goals where we got in good position and we didn’t get it. It’s frustrating
because you work hard as a team to achieve that position and then we don’t execute, but we’ll work on that part.”

As Lauser is finding out, there isn’t much time to reflect on the past during the two-month long high school season, the end of which will be here before we know it.

“Hopefully he can take this experience home with him and hopefully we can recreate something at the end of the season that is pretty magical,” Labbato said. “But it’s hard to do.”