Tigers improve to 4-0 with win at Hersey
By Gary Larsen

Plainfield North senior Ashley Handwork can carry the load, to be sure, but Tigers coach Jane Crowe isn’t about to let her team be a one-trick pony.

“Sometimes we tend to rely on Ashley and say ‘she’s going to be dangerous so let’s just give her the ball and go’, but she draws three defenders sometimes,” Crowe said. “That opens things up for other people and they just need to take that space.

“Even though Ashley had two of our three goals today, we had other people creating some things, and that was good to see.”

Handwork struck twice and sister Heather Handwork also scored in the Tigers’ 3-0 win over host Hersey on Wednesday. It was the rapidity of those goals that did in a Hersey team that played even soccer with North through most of the game’s first half.

“The first goal was a scrum in the box, the second goal was a good shot, and on the third goal we got caught flat,” Hersey coach Brad Abel said. “We played with them for 28 minutes and they scored those goals in something like six minutes or so, and that was it.

“We were finding the first pass but then we had a heck of a time finding the second and third. We had a tough time penetrating their defensive third and (Ashley Handwork) is a handful.”

Through 20 minutes of scoreless soccer the two teams essentially stood toe-to-toe. Hersey’s Lauren Gierman curled in a corner kick at 7 minutes that North keeper Erin Wren punched away, for what turned out to be one of the Huskies’ few dangerous shots in the contest.

The ice was broken at the 20-minute mark when Ashley Handwork located a ball in a crowd in front of the Hersey net. “Erin (Chynoweth) had a shot, it went off somebody, there was a lot of commotion, and I was just there,” Handwork said.

Heather Handwork bent a beauty of a left-footed shot to the upper ninety from 18 yards out, and the Tigers went up 3-0 less than a minute later when Ashley Handwork split two defenders on the dribble and finished on it.

Chynoweth hit a shot off the frame and teammate Kaela Leskovar found a few good shots on her foot in the second half, as the Tigers remained dangerous to the final buzzer.

Like most teams in the area, the Tigers have only been outside a handful of times this year but have now posted wins over Lane Tech, Sandburg, Naperville Central, and Hersey in improving to 4-0.

“We all have a lot of pent-up energy. There’s not a lot of space at all inside,” Ashley Handwork said. “I thought we did well in the middle, we made runs off the ball, used the outsides a lot, and I was happy with our movement.”

After graduating a ton of seniors from last year’s 18-4-2 team, did the Tigers expect to a 4-0 start against stiff competition this season?

“Not at all, to be honest with you, but all the new freshmen melding together has made us a better team,” Handwork said. “Even though we lost all those great players we’ve been able to hold ourselves together pretty well. We haven’t beaten Naperville Central in a long time and we were able to do that this year.”

North’s backline and keeper Erin Wren have only given up 2 goals through 4 games, with veteran Nikki Auble, sophomore Brooke Polonus, and freshmen Tate Barney and Karsyn Stirrett playing solid throughout Wednesday’s contest.

“Our freshmen back there are learning to work together and (freshman) Kali Silhavy subbed a lot today and she did well,” Crowe said. “We’ve had three shutouts in a row against three very good teams. Erin (Wren) is doing a nice job in net and it was nice to get our other goalie, Emma Veselsky, in the game in the second half.”

Hersey sits in severely unfamiliar territory early this season, as a program that traditionally keeps teams out of net, “but no excuses. We have to find our identity. We’re giving up goals in bunches,” Abel said.

“There have been years when we’ve given up 12 goals all year and we’ve already given up nine in three games. When we possess out of the back we look like a team that can compete and for the first twenty minutes we looked good today. We weren’t chasing and we were able to string some passes together. But as soon as they got that first goal, and the second and third shortly followed, and the game changed.”

Wednesday’s game came on the heels of a 1-1 tie between Hersey and Huntley on Tuesday, as Morgan Harris played solidly in net against a Red Raiders team that can string passes together.  Lauren Gierman netted for Hersey and Huntley scored with two minutes left in regulation to force the tie. The Huskies play at Maine South Saturday before hosting MSL rival Barrington on Wednesday.

Plainfield North hosts Minooka Thursday before traveling to SPC rival Plainfield Central for a game on Wednesday.