Vikings fall 1-0 at Barrington
By Gary Larsen

When you’re a sophomore and an outside mid playing on one of the state’s best soccer teams it can be hard to carve out your own identity. But Barrington’s Annalise Avers is doing exactly what she needs to do.

Avers scored the game’s lone goal in Barrington’s 1-0 win over Fremd on Friday, hustling to the post on the right side and finishing on a Jenna Szczesny cross, on a play instigated by Molly Pfeiffer.

“Annalise has been awesome for us. She never stops working and she’s been very coachable,” Fillies coach Ryan Stengren said. “She has scored three goals just by being there this year.”

Avers’ goal punctuated a fairly suffocating 25 minutes of pressure from Barrington in the first half. Fremd keeper Christine Piasecki and her backline of Courtney Norenberg, Cassie Etelemaki, and Katherine Ernst battled valiantly against that pressure, but left too much open space at the far post on Avers’ goal.

Both Fremd (1-2-1, 0-2 in MSL play) and Barrington (4-1-0, 3-1) entered the MSL West Division showdown on the heels of a loss. Fremd fell 2-1 to Buffalo Grove and Barrington lost 1-0 to Hersey on Wednesday.

Fremd fought hard defensively and chased hard after a tying goal down the stretch of Friday’s game, against a Barrington team with superior size and power to its game.

“I was happy with our competitive level. I thought we competed, and in the second half we were able to put them under a little pressure that made them uncomfortable,” Fremd coach Steve Keller said. “I’m proud of the way we didn’t play afraid, and took it to them in the second half and tried to get a tying goal.

“It was a hard-fought game and they definitely had more opportunities than we did, but soccer’s a game where a team can get twenty shots and the other can only get one and still win. So we put ourselves in a position to either tie or win, but we just didn’t get it done.”

Early on Fremd senior Ernst sent a quality freekick to the back post that went for naught, and Fremd’s Jessa Rizzo helped key her side’s best spurt of attacking soccer before Barrington grabbed hold of the run of play for the 25 minutes leading up to halftime.

Barrington’s Aimee Pierce blasted a shot wide from distance at 18 minutes, and the Fillies earned a trio of corner kicks during the span. Avers’ goal came at 29 minutes as a payoff to the Fillies’ persistent pressure in the first half.

“We were dangerous throughout and we just need to be more efficient finishing. We should have had three or four today. We need to be a little more composed,” Stengren said.

While the Fillies weren’t particularly happy with their execution in the final third but they won more fifty-fifty balls and were happy to stay in early contention for this year’s MSL West crown.

“Obviously this was a big game for us and a big rivalry,” Barrington junior Mia Calamari said. “I don’t think we played to our full potential, especially technically, but I think the effort was there a hundred and ten percent.”

Calamari is coming back from a season-ending ankle injury suffered last year, and on Friday she got it done.

“Mia played very, very well,” Stengren said. “I loved the fact that she was moving so much better today, and she won a lot of balls and played a lot of good balls. This is the best she has helped with our possession. When we were on, it was because she was knocking the ball side-to-side.”

Slowing down Molly Pfeiffer is a chief concern for any team playing Barrington and on Friday the Vikings’ Ashley McConnell – an attacking player by trade and a star basketball player for Fremd – applied her defensive instincts on the hardcourt to great effect.

Pfeiffer will always win her share of balls on a soccer field but for much of the game McConnell kept her from being too dangerous.

“Athletic-wise I don’t think she’s as strong as Pfeiffer but she’ll battle,” Keller said of McConnell. “She’s probably a little quicker and she can at least limit some of the things that (Pfeiffer) can do.”

McConnell returned to her role in the attack down the stretch and keyed Fremd’s late attempts at finding an equalizer. But while the Vikings have players like McConnell, Ernst, Etelemaki, and Michelle Mottonen that can all put a charge into a ball, the Vikings struggled all night to put a hard-hit ball on frame.

“I can’t explain it. I find this problem a lot and I don’t get it,” Keller said. “In gym class they can ping a ball but once that moment in the game comes, it’s almost like they’re trying too hard.”

Barrington keeper Hannah Luedtke and her backline of Emily Decraene, Meredith Slott, and Emily Morin posted the team’s fourth shutout in five games on Friday.

“Hannah has been great for us, and Meredith Slott had a very good game,” Stengren said. “My backline was very good today. I was mad at them at times, but … this is the first time Emily Decraene started this year and she did very, very well. And I thought Carrie Caplin came in and did some very nice things for us in limited minutes, especially in the first half.”