Chicagoland Soccer

Short-handed Hawks score four goals in win over Spartans

By Kevin Chroust

With its two starting forwards out and one of its two playmaking center midfielders again missing time, Bartlett was thrilled with its four-goal output against St. Francis on Thursday.

The offense resulted in a 4-2 Hawks win at Streamwood over the Spartans while they played without starters Fabio Aiello, Tyler Lake and Charlie Sordini to begin to right the ship after a six-game stretch that included four losses.

“We’re really happy getting four goals considering the fact that three of our main attacking players are out,” Bartlett coach Ben Beary said. “We had good opportunities.”

The Hawks (8-8-2), however, weren’t OK with nearly allowing a three-goal lead to slip away in the final five minutes of play.

“We quit a little bit early and focused too much on the attack,” midfielder Ramiro Arroyo said. “We gave up defensively too much.”

The Hawks led 2-0 at halftime on goals by Anthony DiNuzzo (12th minute) and Matt Seidl (17th minute).

Neither was exactly a highlight-reel goal, but both Hawks players made the most of their opportunities from within striking distance.

“A goal’s a goal,” said a laughing DiNuzzo, who is on the verge of making history for the Hawks.

No Bartlett player has had double digits in both goals and assists in a single season but DiNuzzo now has scored nine goals while contributing nine assists.

Arroyo tacked on a third Bartlett goal in the 62nd minute to seemingly put the match away. It ended up being a fairly important one.

“I was going to go for a pass,” Arroyo said. “But I couldn’t see anyone open, so I just turned and took the shot.”

St. Francis soon began to click in the offensive third.

Center Midfielder Drew Mascari rang the crossbar in the 69th minute, the Spartans’ best scoring chance as of that time.

Six minutes later, he found the back of the net, electing for an equally hard-hit ball to the lower right corner this time around.

Bartlett keeper Cristian Alva didn’t have much of a chance at either shot.

Mascari’s goal drew little in the way of celebration from St. Francis. Down 3-1 with 4:18 left, it seemed like too little too late.

But when he made his way into the box less than a minute later and forced Alva to make a diving deflection, Spartans teammate Brett Jungles was there to poke in the rebound and at least make things interesting with 3:31 still on the clock.

“We got our shots on goal from outside in the first half,” Mascari said. “They were a lot farther out than we’d like.

"Our goals in the second half came from inside the box, so it was just a matter of getting in the box and getting that shot off.”

The equalizing opportunity never came for the Spartans, and DiNuzzo ended any chance of a last-second thriller with an 89th minute clincher from distance.

St. Francis (7-9-2) has been in a bit of a rough stretch as well, dropping four of its last six contests.

And though it didn’t do anything to make things look better on paper, Mascari was pleased with how his team battled back in the final minutes after trying to find offense for the first 75 minutes.

“Down 3-0 with four minutes left, I’m proud of my team,” Mascari said. “I think we did good to come back and make a game of it.”

Bartlett faces a trio of top-shelf tests before the postseason begins, with a pair of home games against defending 3A state champion Rockford-Boylan and Waubonsie Valley and a road game at West Chicago to close out the regular season.

St. Francis plays at Aurora Central Catholic on Friday and at Elgin on Saturday, before closing out the regular season against Larkin, Glenbard South, and Marian Central Catholic in their regular-season finale.