Corsairs battle to a draw with visiting Stevenson

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By Gary Larsen

As any player or coach can tell you, the most dangerous lead in soccer can sometimes bite you in the keyster.

Carmel grabbed a 2-0 lead on visiting Stevenson on Friday, only to see the Patriots score twice to force a draw in Mundelein. And even though it was one of those ties that felt more like a loss to the Corsairs, the big picture was encouraging.

“That’s a good team and we scrapped out two goals against them,” Carmel coach John Halloran said. “We didn’t have Jeremy (Jenich) or Shea (Ronayne) and those are two pretty good players for us, and we still tied a very good team.

“We’ve still got TJ (Poll) on the mend as well, so I think once we get all our pieces on the field, we’re going to be real solid.”

All four goals in the non-conference tilt were scored in the game’s second half, one apiece by Stevenson’s of Ricky Lekakh and Joe Hugener, after Carmel’s Christian Avalos netted his 6th and 7th goals of the season.

And on his 17th birthday, no less.

“On the first one I made the run and put it back post, with the keeper coming at me,” Avalos said. “The second one fell on the ground and Justin Andreasik laid it off to me and I put it in with my left foot.”

Halloran is happy with what Avalos is bringing to the table this season, beyond his finishing ability.

“He’s our leading scorer with seven goals, and he’s had a very quietly good season for us,” Halloran said. “He’s got a lot of tools. He’s strong in the air, he’s very technical, he can finish, he gets his head up and distributes well, and he’s been getting better every game.”

A scoreless first half saw Carmel (8-4-3) working hard to establish its possession game, spearheaded as it has been all season long by the midfield duo of Ian Heinrich and Peter Kolb. Carmel loves to play possession soccer, and the 11th-seed of the Palatine sectional took the fight to 8th-seeded Stevenson (8-3-3) in the first half of play.

It took a while, however.

“We opened up real nice in the first fifteen minutes and played the way we want to, and all of a sudden we were hitting it long,” Stevenson coach Mark Schartner said. “Then we were chasing, and chasing, and chasing.”

The most dangerous scoring chance through 40 minutes came when Kolb bent in a corner kick that Stevenson keeper Quentin Low tipped over the crossbar. Low went parallel to the ground to swat an Avalos shot past the post at 39 minutes to keep the game scoreless.

“Quentin Low is the real deal,” Schartner said. “He’s a Division One goalkeeper.”

Low’s counterpart also showed his mettle on Friday. Carmel senior goalkeeper Steve Sliwa was aggressive and fearless off his line throughout the game, and showed continued progress as a baseball player that decided to give soccer a chance this season.

“I wasn’t sure if I going to play until June or July,” Sliwa said. “I was playing baseball and once our summer ball ended, I thought I’d try out for soccer. I played some in fifth and sixth grade, but that was just guys kicking the ball around without a whole lot of instruction.

“This was a big step up. There’s a lot of instruction and I work every day with coach (Brendan) Leetch and coach (Paul) Bunnell. It was tough at first. I’ve still got a lot to learn but I feel more and more comfortable. As the season has gone on I’ve felt more confident coming off my line and just how aggressive I am, and how to play the position better.”

Halloran is happy that Sliwa showed up at tryouts this year. “I don’t think there was anything he could have done to save the two goals we gave up today,” Halloran said. “He’s been a great surprise for us.”

Avalos broke the ice five minutes into the second half when Kolb fed him a through-ball, before striking again at the 60-minute mark after a throw-in found the carpet in front of the Stevenson goal, and Andreasik touched it over to the junior, who buried it from 8 yards out.

Halloran asked for and got an 80-minute effort from his boys in Monday’s 2-0 win over Marist and he was again happy with the effort he saw on Friday.

“Absolutely,” Halloran said. “My only criticism would be that with about twenty minutes to go, our possession dropped way off. And we cannot play long-ball. As soon as we do, we’re in trouble.”

Lekakh cut the lead in half soon after Avalos’ second goal, and from there the Patriots found another gear.

“The momentum definitely shifted when they got that first goal,” Sliwa said. “We needed to keep up the intensity more. We work hard on that all season so to let up and let them come back like that was disappointing.

“We were possessing the ball well and Christian Avalos had a great day. It just seemed like in the last twenty minutes, we kind of fell apart and started playing kickball, instead of playing Carmel soccer and trying to possess the ball.”

Hugener’s tying goal at 76 minutes didn’t diminish the 2-goal birthday Avalos had, “but I’d rather have the win,” Avalos said. “We were up by two and we obviously wanted to some away with the win. But they dominated us the last fifteen minutes of the game, and we lost intensity.

“We just need to keep working on playing eighty minutes, and stay focused the entire game. You’ve got to keep your mind in the game. Just because you’re up 2-0 doesn’t mean you can stop playing.”

Halloran applauded the fine day’s effort put in by defender Pat Hannon, “and (midfielder) Max Heinrich does a fantastic job for us,” Halloran said. “And it’s little stuff that he does, that’s not going to show up on a stat sheet. He goes back defensively, goes forward when he can, and he’s smart.”

Schartner was thrilled to see his boys find a pair of goals to knot the contest, for a rock-solid team that has recently hit a spell of scoring woes.

“It was a very nice comeback. We’ve been playing outstanding defense but we’ve been just snake-bit as far as finishing,” Schartner said. “No one feels worse than the guys up front that are working their butts off, making quality runs, working their tails off to get to that point and then their last touch fails them.

“But we made twelve different position changes in that second half, and finally started moving the ball like we should.”

Stevenson also got a good day’s work from Robbie Thomashow on Friday. “Robbie is our outside left back,” Schartner said. “He played a great first half and then I moved him into the midfield and he got the job done there.”