Szalach, Swift goals send Huskies past LT
By Matt Le Cren

Naperville North has never won the prestigious Naperville Invitational since it debuted in 1998.

The Huskies did when their pool in the first year of the tournament, but no overall champion was decided.

So the defending state champions have set their sight on winning this year’s championship.

“We want to win,” Naperville North senior midfielder Christa Szalach said. “That’s our goal. We’ve gotten to the finals but never won it. Last year getting to the finals and losing to [Naperville] Central on PKs after overtime was not fun.”

Fun is something the Huskies have been having in abundance this season and on Saturday they took the first step toward their goal by knocking off Lyons Township 2-0 to win their group.

Szalach and Zoe Swift scored for Naperville North (9-0-2), with both goals being set up by sophomore sensation Abbie Boswell.

Boswell and Swift were held in check for the most part by LT’s tough defense, with Indiana-bound star Ari Kowalski sticking to Swift like glue and sophomore Liza Gabrek shadowing the powerful and quick Bosworth.

Though the Huskies outshot the Lions 11-1 in the opening half, neither Swift nor Boswell was able to get a shot on goal as the match remained scoreless at the break.

But no matter how good your defense is, it appears to be next-to-impossible to hold down the irrepressible Boswell for long. While she is getting plenty of attention because of her scoring, her passing abilities have been just as deadly and she now has 15 goals and six assists.

“‘Bos’ works really hard on the field,” Szalach said. “She does her best to get the ball on her foot and take the player on, create some space and center it back so we have the runners trying to get there. She does a phenomenal job of doing that, just keeps working hard. It’s great.”

Szalach was the beneficiary of Boswell’s help when she scored what turned out to be the game-winner with 33:07 left in the second half. Boswell sent a pass from the far right side into the box to Szalach, who turned and fired a 14-yard shot past LT goalie Lidia Breen and into the lower left corner of the net.

“Bos got a great ball in,” Szalach said. “I was able to settle it down, trapped it with my thigh and hit it at the goal. Luckily I got it to the far post because the goalie was [on the] near [post]. Anything on frame is better than nothing.”

Though it did nothing to deflate the Lions’ effort, Szalach’s goal energized the Huskies, who continued to control possession and pursued a second goal with passion.

“I think it definitely got our hopes up,” Szalach said. “We were able to stay in the game and keep pushing until the end and Zoe did a great job topping it off.”

Swift tallied the clincher with a great finish at the 1:44 mark, again off a feed from Boswell. This time Boswell took the ball deep into the left corner before slithering a cross to Swift on the near post. Swift’s one-timer went over Breen’s left shoulder for a 2-0 lead.

“I just got to the sideline and beat my defender and hit it with my left foot and got it up to Zoe and she did an amazing [shot] to get it in,” said Boswell, who seemed unbothered by the tight marking. “[Against good defense] you look to get into the open space, kind of like trick them as to where you’re going.

“Me and Zoe were both getting man-marked kind of tough but I thought we did a good job of still making plays even though we were being marked a lot.”

Naperville North coach Steve Goletz was pleased to see that.

“LT did a great job of defending,” Goletz said. “Every year they’re great. Their girls are tough, they’re super-athletic. I think out of anybody that we’ve played so far they gave Bos and Zoe the most trouble up top.”

But with the Lions (6-3-2) focused so intently on defending, the Huskies were able to dominate the midfield behind Szalach, Cora Climo, Emily Bromagen and Abby Mangefrida.

“At halftime we talked about trying to link up our midfield a little bit better and I think in the second half we did a better job of that of attacking space,” Goletz said. “Cora and Christa and Megan Lee [were] carrying the ball and making their defenders step so it opened up the space for Zoe and Bos in behind and we got one in. Christa makes a great finish and gets us on the board and we were able to settle in after that.”

The Huskies played with an urgency in the second half because Goletz warned them not to waste Boswell’s tireless efforts to set up a goal.

“At halftime I talked about it,” Goletz said. “I said Bos has done a great job all half of getting endline and getting the ball across and we just weren’t able to get on the end of it.

“A lot of that was LT’s defending but a lot of that too was us not making the right runs and timing our runs. I said Bos is doing too good of a job of trying to get everybody involved and we’ve got to put one away for her, so I was glad Zoe had a great finish to take the pressure off.”

The Lions were at a disadvantage because they were playing their second game of the day, having earlier beaten Lincoln-Way Central on goals from Erin Fitzgerald and Emily Lange. They took a calculated gamble in focusing on defense in the first half and hoping to score on a counterattack.

“We knew we had to play defense,” Lyons coach Bill Lanspeary said. “We figured if we could get out at half at 0-0 we were in pretty good shape.

“I thought [the LT defenders] were fantastic. Ari did a great job on Zoe, who is a great player, and I thought Liza stepped up and did a very nice job on Boswell and we had help over the top.

“The problem was when we played that, then we allowed possession from their backs and that allowed them to come up. We knew it was a choice to make. We hoped that we could get possession and get up in transition a little bit and I think we kind of hung back and were a little too defensive at times.”

The Lions mustered only one shot before intermission and did a little better in the second half, getting three shots. Though they never had extended periods of control, the visitors did have a couple of long-range chances at getting the equalizer in the final five minutes before Swift scored.

Defender Catherine King boomed a 49-yard free kick that was headed for the upper right corner before being caught by Huskies goalie Fiona Baenziger with 4:55 to go and senior co-captain Abbie Pasquinelli saw a running 25-yarder sail past the wrong side of the left post at the 3:30  mark.

“I thought we possessed the ball a little better in the second half,” Lanspeary said. “We didn’t quite get the numbers up into the midfield.”