Trojans beat Mustangs for Downers Grove bragging rights

 

 

By Matt Le Cren

Senior year of high school is about making memories, some of which will last a lifetime.

You can bet Downers Grove North seniors Heather Muno and Christina Siddu will remember what they did Saturday for a long time.

Muno scored her first goal of the season and Siddu made four big saves to power the host Trojans to a 2-1 upset of crosstown rival Downers Grove South at Carstens Field.

It is the first time Downers North has ever beaten the Mustangs. The teams tied once, in 1989.

“It means a lot,” Muno said. “It was definitely a big win. We played our hearts out.

“We were up for this game. We know that this is the crosstown classic so it means a lot. I’m kind of in shock.”

Muno shocked the favored Mustangs (7-4-1) when she gave the Trojans a 1-0 lead just seven minutes into the contest.

Alyse Dutcher started the play when she raced down the right wing and sent a cross to Muno, whose 15-yard shot went over the head of Downers South goalie Jamie Furio.

Though each team had its share of scoring chances, the Trojans (4-4) made sure Muno’s goal was no fluke.

Siddu, who like Muno is a four-year varsity player, made two great diving stops to smother breakaways in the box by South’s Autumn Rasmussen.

But the Mustangs tied the game with 3:38 to go before the break when sophomore Ava Porlier received a pass from the midfield and raced past a defender before sliding a 15-yard shot under the arm of Siddu.

With neither side able to claim the upper hand after 40 minutes, Downers North coach Bob Calder gave his team a pep talk during halftime.

“I was just really proud of the girls,” Calder said. “I’m happy for the seniors that have been with us for a long time. This is their first win for crosstown.

“That’s what I told them at halftime: you’re going to remember this game more than any other game all year, especially the seniors. Do it for them, do it for yourselves. But everyone is really excited.”

The excitement ratcheted up when junior captain Gianna Marconi bagged her fourth goal of the season with 26:50 remaining in the second half.

Marconi’s 20-yard blast from just outside the top left corner of the penalty area whizzed over the head of Mustangs goalie Katelyn Laraia before dipping down under the crossbar in the upper right corner of the net.

“I had a shot like that in the first half and I didn’t get it off,” Marconi said. “So I promised myself at halftime that if I got a shot I would just take it and it went in.”

After that, it was just a matter of hanging on to the lead. The Mustangs were without three of their top offensive players in Stephanie Zurales and Brittany Dietz, who are sidelined with injuries, and Nicole Janowiak, who was attending a wedding.

That left it up to Rasmussen and fellow freshman Lexi Dimovski to shoulder much of the offensive burden and the rookies did a pretty good job of it, speeding around the corners and making things a little hairy for Siddu and fullbacks Emma Krick, Kaitlin Gunderson and Arlinda Osmani, especially in the final 25 minutes.

Dimovski came closest to tying the game for South when she volleyed a corner kick from Porlier off the crossbar with 24:00 to go and the Mustangs applied even more heat over the final five minutes by forcing five corner kicks, including two in the last minute.

“We started the game winning a lot out of the air, which was huge because we are really, really young and small,” Calder said. “It stopped kind of at the end of the game. They started getting really aggressive and winning everything. It made it hard to breathe on the sideline with them getting five corners in the last five minutes.”

Muno, subbed out for defensive purposes, was one of those watching from the bench in the final minutes.

“There was nothing I wanted to do except be on that field and play, especially since this was my last time ever playing against them,” said Muno, who plans to play at College of DuPage next year along with Siddu. “But the energy on the bench definitely picked up the team.”

With five freshmen and five sophomores on the roster, the Trojans are rife with inexperience but full of determination. They feel their best days are ahead of them, especially now that several injured players are getting healthy.

“A ton of players were hurt at the beginning [of the season] and now we’re all kind of getting back into it and just bringing everything we can,” Muno said. “We are undermanned. We go into most games and the other team expects us to lose, but we just want to prove ourselves and even though we’re young we want to show them that we can still play with them.”

The Trojans, who lost 5-0 to the Mustangs last year, made a believer out of Downers South coach Abby Anderson.

“They wanted it more than us today,” Anderson said. “They definitely deserved it, so nothing to take away from them at all. They’re doing good stuff here and they’ve got players, so they deserve that win.”

While not playing badly, the Mustangs have hit a little speed bump with this loss and a 1-1 tie against Lemont on Thursday. Zurales and Dietz are expected to return soon, which will help as the schedule gets tougher with the Naperville Invitational beginning on Thursday.

“We’re in a little bit of a slump,” Anderson said. “We’re missing some players and kind of questioning a little bit of our focus and intensity right now and leadership. We didn’t play well today. There’s no way we should play Naperville North [to a] 2-1 [loss] and then [do] something like this.”

The Trojans haven’t done much of anything in recent years, struggling with perpetual youth in an area brimming with top-rated teams. But there are glimpses of a bright future.

“Out of all the conference games and tournaments we were all really looking forward to this game,” Marconi said. “We lost to them last year and we really wanted to pick ourselves up and take a win out of this game. We worked as a team the whole time, we finished it, all 80 minutes of it and came out with a win. So it feels good."

Now the Trojans, who have won three of their last four games, have some of that hard-to-measure intangible: confidence.

“We’ve had challenges early on that we’ve had to face with injuries and stuff but I think this win just gives us more confidence and it will help us with games to come,” Marconi noted.

Even though Muno, Siddu and North’s other seniors – forward Grace Morgan and midfielder Emma Marino – may not be around to see the end of this rebuilding project, Calder said don’t be surprised if the Trojans start piling up some wins now.

“I was doing some homework this morning just looking at the remainder of our schedule and I was thinking this was going to be a really good game, that we should be pretty even and I thought it was going to be a one-goal decided game,” Calder said. “I was hoping it would be in our favor because the last two one-goal decided games were not in our favor. This time it went our way which was really good.

“If we’re like South, this is going to be a pretty good end of the year, because this put us at 4-4 and they’ve already played several of our upcoming opponents with a lot of wins.”