Hilltoppers earn tie on Levin-to-Dugan goal
By Matt LeCren

Two players making their varsity debuts played a prominent role when District 87 rivals Glenbard East and Glenbard West met Friday night at Memorial Field in Glen Ellyn.

Glenbard East freshman Brittany Paganucci gave the visiting Rams the lead when she scored her first career goal with 25:17 left in the second half, but Glenbard West sophomore Courtney Dugan answered by bagging her first goal 18 minutes later as the Hilltoppers salvaged a 2-2 tie in the season opener for both teams.

Paganucci’s goal came on a 15-yard shot in traffic from the left side of the penalty box and sailed over the head of Glenbard West goalie Kylie Paul into the upper right corner. It came just 22 seconds after Rams senior Jess DeJong had tied the game 1-1 on a left-footed blast from 22 yards out that hit the inside of the right post and went in.

“Brittany had a great game,” Glenbard East coach Kent Overbey said. “She has got a lot of speed, she takes people off the dribble. We expect big things from her. She’s been on our radar for a while.”

Paganucci is the younger sister of 2012 graduate Lindsey Paganucci, who is East’s all-time leading scorer. DeJong played with the elder Paganucci the past three seasons and is now teamed with Brittany at striker.

“She brings a lot,” DeJong said. “She has speed, she’s got a good shot so it’s going to be nice playing up [front] with her, just like her sister. I’ll have someone to work with.”

Paganucci served notice that she will be an impact player when she fired the first shot of the season in the third minute, forcing Paul to make a save.

Not much else happened the rest of the first half, which was played in freezing rain, but Glenbard West grabbed a 1-0 lead eight minutes into the second half when Alexandra Levin volleyed a short shot past East keeper Veronica Fairbairn off a hard feed from Zoe Pearson.

That woke up the Rams, who soon caused all sorts of havoc. Overbey had just finished celebrating DeJong’s equalizer when Paganucci put his club in front.

“Jordyn Fulton put it down the line and I took a touch toward the goal and I hit it with my right foot and I put it in the upper 90,” Paganucci said. “It was fun. It is good to work with the older girls and going up against tougher competition.”

With only four returning starters from a team that won 11 games, one shy of the school record, the Rams have a lot of players like Paganucci who are just getting their feet wet. East has seven sophomores, most of whom will play significant roles, and early reviews are encouraging.

“It’s good because we have a really young team, so for a lot of people on our team this was their first varsity game ever,” DeJong said. “So being able to score two in under 30 seconds or whatever it was was really good. It pushed our momentum up.

“I think this year our offense has more speed and we also have more technical [skill] in the middle. We have a ton of sophomores who came up and they’re all really fast and tough. They’re strong physically.”

That has Overbey guardedly optimistic that the program can continue its rise of recent years.

“Things look positive for us,” Overbey said. “I think we’re a lot more potent than we have been in the past.

“It was definitely entertaining especially considering we’ve only been outside for about three days. [It was good to] get out of here with a result that we can be happy with. We felt they kind of stole it from us at the end but they made two great crosses, we didn’t follow our marks and they finished. We can’t argue with that.”

Neither can the Hilltoppers, who rose to the occasion by scoring the tying goal with 7:48 left. Levin took a ball aggressively to the end line on the left side and slid a sharp cross through the crease to Dugan, who banged it home.

“I think that we started off kind of slow but we were able to pick it up a little bit, pick up the pace and toward the end we just went all-out for it and that’s why we were able to get the second goal,” Dugan said. “I feel like if we went maybe five more minutes we would have been able to win.”

The Hilltoppers, who won just five games last season, have only 16 healthy players, so depth is going to be a problem. But what they lack in numbers they may make up for with skill.

“I think this season we have a smaller team but we’ll be able to come out strong and do our best,” Dugan said. “I feel like we’re more technical and are able to move the ball around. We have some speed some, too, up top and strong outsides, so we’re able to get it out wide and then cross it in. That’s how we got both of our goals.”

The late comeback, something that was in short supply last spring, pleased Glenbard West coach Maciej Kusmierz.

“We lost concentration for a couple minutes,” Kusmierz said. “That almost cost us dearly, but we showed some good play this evening. We have phases of the game where we actually play very well. I give the credit to our girls for trying hard, for finding themselves 2-1 down and they were trying to get a goal. Luckily it fell for us and we managed to pull out a tie.”