Chicagoland Soccer

Hawks fall behind early, can't recover in loss to North Stars

By Seth Hancock

After having seen its matches on Tuesday and Thursday cancelled, St. Charles North had not taken part in a contest for well over a week.

So coming into their Upstate Eight Conference crossover game against Bartlett, no one would blame the North Stars if they were a little rusty.

However, North didn’t show any signs of rust as it came away with a 5-2 victory over the Hawks on Saturday in St. Charles.

“We talked about it before the game,” said North Stars coach Eric Willson. “We could have been rusty. We haven’t played in 11 days. I thought we came out and played one of our best halves of soccer all season in the first half.”

Bartlett (6-8-1) had the game’s first scoring chance a minute in as Ramiro Arroyo took a 35-yard free kick that just missed the net high.

But after that it was all North (9-3-2), which took a 2-0 lead into halftime.

The first goal came from Justin Stanko seven minutes into the match.

Alex Behm tallied his first of three assists on set plays as the goal came off a corner kick from the left corner which Stanko scored from the right post.

“We just worked on two new plays on corner kicks and we scored on one of them and nearly scored on the other,” Behm said. “We work on our set plays a lot.”

Tyler Davis gave the North Stars a 2-0 lead with 13:40 left in the first half on an unassisted goal.

Davis took his shot at an awkward angle from the left side and the ball ricocheted off the right post and into the net.

North earned six corner kicks in the opening half and recorded 10 shots on goal.

Davis, Behm, Connor Lefelstein, Kyle Swanson and Mike Winhoffer constantly pressured the Bartlett net in the first half to create scoring chances.

“We expect that when we play them,” said Bartlett coach Ben Beary. “They’re always a really good team and think they’re even better than last year. I told their coach I hope they make a nice run in the playoffs because they’re good.”

Charlie Sordini had the Hawks' lone shot on goal in the first half and Fabio Aiello had a shot just go over the net off an Anthony DiNuzzo corner kick.

Carlos Avina had a couple nice defensive plays for the Hawks in the first half and goalkeeper Cristian Alva made eight of his 11 saves in the first half.

His best save of the game came late in the half as Davis took a shot from the right side but Alva made a diving stop to keeo the ball from finding the left corner.

“(Alva) keeps us in each game,” Beary said. “This is a back line that’s still learning and he’s the anchor back there.”

Lefelstein gave the North Stars a 3-0 lead off a penalty kick two minutes into the second half but after that, the Hawks started showing some more offensive life.

A minute after Lefelstein’s score, DiNuzzo played a ball up to Sordini who raced past North's defense and was able to find the net on a one-on-one play with North Stars’ keeper Billy Larsen (2 saves).

“Their defense wasn’t marking the ball well,” Sordini said. “Anthony DiNuzzo was playing the ball up to me well all game and we were able to score.”

The Hawks had scoring chance from Matt Seidl and Avina over the next 17 minutes but the North Stars made it 4-1 midway through the half.

They did that when Behm took a free kick which Swanson got a head on to score over the leaping hands of Alva.

Sordini and DiNuzzo hooked up again, this time with DiNuzzo scoring and Sordini assisting, to pull the Hawks to 4-2 with 18:48 left in the game.

Phillip LeGare scored the last goal of the game for the North Stars a minute after Bartlett's final score off of a Behm free kick.

“For 10 minutes or so after we scored that first goal I thought we could have made something of it and gotten back into the game,” Beary said. “Overall, we can take some good things from that second half.”

For Behm and all of the North Stars players from last season’s squad, this was also a chance to get some revenge against the team that knocked them out of the state tournament in a regional final last year.

“I know all the guys wanted to come out and dominate them,” Behm said. “That stung last year and we wanted to beat them. We’re playing pretty well right now but we can still play better.”