Tigers fall in a shootout to Lyons Township
By Matt Le Cren

Lyons Township and Wheaton Warrenville South had to wait until Wednesday to complete the sectional semifinal game they started playing on Tuesday, when lightning suspended overtime play and the final 10 minutes and 27 seconds of a 1-1 tie.

Players from both sides thus had to wait nearly 24 hours to return to Hinsdale Central’s Dickinson Field to decide the outcome, a wait that was particularly hard on their respective goalkeepers.

"I was so nervous today. I couldn't do anything in any of my classes," Lyons Township goalkeeper Lidia Breen said. "I would just be staring at the wall, thinking 'what if we get into a PK shootout?'.”

Sometimes your worst fear can set up your biggest moment to shine.

After neither team scored in overtime, Breen’s nerves were tested and then rested after she made a game-deciding save in the shootout to send second-seeded LT to a sectional championship game against top-seeded rival Hinsdale Central on Friday.

WW South (13-6-2) took a 2-0 lead in the shootout after Lyons Township (16-4-2) missed a pair of penalty kicks, but an LT conversion and a Tigers miss made it 2-1. South went wide on another attempt before LT’s CC Holbert converted to make it 2-2.

That’s when Breen grabbed the spotlight, cleanly saving South’s fourth attempt. Teammate Emily Lange converted her shot, setting up a confrontation between Breen and Tigers senior Dana Miller.

Miller converted a penalty kick against Breen during regulation play, one day earlier.

"When we played them last night, (Miller) went to my left,” Breen said. “Today she was staring at the right side so I said 'she's going left' and I just decided to go for it.”

Breen dove, extended, and swatted away the attempt to keep LT’s season alive.

“It was nerve-wracking but somehow I do better under pressure,” Breen said. “I don't think of myself in that situation. I just think 'I have to make the saves. I have to sacrifice myself'. If I have to get injured to make the save, I'll do it."

The Lions figured they ultimately deserved the win, considering the way they played for the 100 minutes of soccer leading up to the shootout.

“We were really frustrated because we had all the momentum,” Lyons Township sophomore Erin Fitzgerald said after Tuesday’s shortened game. “Literally in the second half I think the ball barely crossed the halfway line.

“We were pushing and pushing and winning balls off of their backs and we just couldn’t get it in the back of the net, which is always frustrating.”

Both teams were of a mind to finish the contest. The rain never came and the lightning proved short-lived as it passed far to the south of the stadium on Tuesday.

The Lions clearly had the better of the play, especially after halftime.

“[Playing tomorrow] might be a better situation than to sit there for 30 minutes and then go back [out] there because you kind of get out of the mindset,” Fitzgerald said Tuesday. “And we’ll be fresh tomorrow.”

Fitzgerald had given the Lions (15-4-2) a 1-0 lead when she ripped a 30-yard cracker through the hands of leaping WW South goalie Abbey Fuster with 17:34 to go in the first half. It was Fitzgerald’s team-leading 14th goal of the season.

Fuster was well aware of Fitzgerald’s reputation for having a heavy foot but still couldn’t stop the shot.

“It was definitely a really good shot,” Fuster said. “After I noticed where I was when I missed it I was like, ‘Alright, it was upper 90.’

“I was coming into it expecting far shots. Dana [Miller] told us yesterday and Coach [Guy Callipari] told us again today during the meeting, so I was ready for the shot. I just had too much in my head. I was like, ‘Do I tip it or do I catch it,’ and that’s what really held me back.”

But Fuster would later play a big role in keeping the Tigers’ season alive, as did Miller, who changed the complexion of the game when she converted a penalty kick just 41 seconds after Fitzgerald’s goal.

The Tigers’ Nikki Molino was knocked down in the LT penalty area and WW South (13-5-2) was awarded the penalty. It was a controversial call, especially given that few fouls were called the rest of the way as the game became increasingly violent.

“It’s just an unfortunate situation because we obviously got scored on an unfortunate counter,” Fitzgerald said. “We thought the call was somewhat questionable. It’s just been a weird game in that aspect.”

Miller agreed.

“That was really key to keeping us in the game,” Miller said of the penalty. “It’s definitely very intense [out there].

“It’s a very physical game as I think anyone can tell. I’d say that the play is pretty even so far so we’re just hoping that we can get a goal quickly.”

Miller’s penalty was the only shot on goal for the Tigers. They had only one other shot in regulation, that being a 12-yarder that freshman forward Erin Madigan put over the crossbar with 29:50 to go in the second half.

Other than that, the play went increasingly LT’s way as the game went on. But Fuster made three saves in the second half and another in overtime. The biggest stop came when she stopped Fitzgerald’s point-blank volley on a corner kick from C.C. Holbert at the 35:10 mark of the second half.

“My team was doing very well tracking them back, so it was all about keeping us in the game for a little bit longer so I could do something for my seniors,” Fuster said.

Fuster did that, as Lanspeary acknowledged.

“The first half I thought was pretty back and forth,” Lanspeary said. “Since then I thought we settled down and started playing a lot better, but you’ve still got to create and put the ball in the back of the net and right now they’ve made it very tough for us.”

“I liked how we were playing (Tuesday),” LT coach Bill Lanspeary said. "We've had delays and then gone back out, but never 'hey, let's pick it up the next day'. It's a strange feeling. I don't know how you get a team ready to play for ten minutes, but we tried."

The Lions next take on a Hinsdale Central team that has beaten them in consecutive games – first in last year’s postseason and then in this year’s regular-season WSC contest. The LT-Central rivalry is heated and storied, and the Lions will have to come down quickly from their high-drama win over WW South and prepare for the Red Devils.

"That's the hard part now," Lanspeary said. "You're so up after this one and you have to give the kids some time to enjoy it but right afterward we tried to remind them that now we have to get ready for Friday."

For Callipari and a team that features five freshmen and six sophomores, a tied game after 100 minutes wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

"We felt our chances (in a shootout) were perhaps better than they were on the pitch," Callipari said. "Obviously, they're bigger, stronger, and faster and I don't think anybody is hiding that. We can threaten in transition, we're not going to possess very much, and it looks like we're always getting numbers behind the ball but that's by necessity and the fact that (LT) is always possessing it.

"Getting to the penalty kicks wasn't something that we planned to do. It just kind of happened that way. We were confident in our abilities and being up 2-0 it was hard to kind of fathom it would swing so fast, but then we missed the next two. That's the beauty and the ugliness of this game all at the same time."

The Tigers now say goodbye to seniors Miller, Kelly Langlas, Natalie Jensen, Erin Coakley, Zoe Ekonomou, Alia Devick, and Casey Ulrich, who led a young team beyond their coach’s expectations in 2013.

"I told the seniors that what they've provided, they'll never know," Callipari said. "They pushed the bar because realistically, I probably wouldn't have thought we'd get out of the regional, but they thought differently. They gave our underclassmen a taste of what that is, and the idea that they can get there and they can reach there. They pushed the envelope and raised the bar a little bit higher for the underclassmen. Now they've been there and hopefully they can use that experience for the betterment next year, and we can get past this hump.

"Some of the seniors I've coached for four years, three years, two years, and one year -- the whole gamut and they've all contributed. And when you have twelve underclassmen that make up half your roster, there's a lot of immaturity and lack of focus so it really take leadership to redefine what our goals are in a way that the younger players can understand.

“The seniors did a tremendous job of that and you could see our growth moving forward in our confidence, and that stems from leadership. That's what we'll miss from them."