Fillies drop 1-0 loss to Naperville Central
By Gary Larsen

Freshmen can’t drive yet, freshmen can’t stay out late at night, and freshmen can still often seem like little kids.

But sometimes freshmen can score big goals in big games, too.

Naperville Central freshman Amanda Murphy scored the biggest one yet of her young career on Friday, the lone goal scored in a Naperville Invitational semifinal game between the host Redhawks and Barrington.

With Murphy already departed from the field after the game, confirmation was left to her coach as to whether Veronica Ellis or Murphy scored the goal. “(Murphy) said she scored it,” Redhawks coach Ed Watson said. “Freshmen are usually too scared to lie about those things... and she's too young to know she’s not supposed to be as good as she is.”

“But we’re not going to break people down with a superstar. On our goal today it was a matter of (Murphy) being in the right place when she needed to be there.”

With Barrington (9-4-1) pressuring Naperville Central (12-2-3) through the first 25 minutes of the second half, the Redhawks’ finally crossed midfield and had a ball at the feet of the senior Ellis, 40 yards from goal at the touchline on the right side.

Ellis did just what was suggested to her earlier.

“Me and Autumn (Muckenhirn) combined with the center mids, she dropped it to me, and coach Watson told me earlier the sun was in the goalie’s eyes and to try to hit it near post,” Ellis said. “It went to the near-post side and the sun was right in her eyes.

“We were laughing because at halftime (Watson) said ‘I don’t even care if it’s forty yards out. Just hit it’.”

Ellis’ 40-yard boot was headed for pay dirt but Barrington keeper Hannah Luedtke elevated to tip it off the crossbar. The ball hit the carpet, and Murphy was there to clean it up into net. It was her second goal of the season.

“That was a nightmare (serve),” Watson said. “The sun was right in her eyes but she saved it and then Amanda finished it.”

The win sent Naperville Central to a rematch of last year’s Naperville Invite title game between the Redhawks and Naperville North, which won 2-1 over Neuqua Valley in Friday’s nightcap. Saturday's title game will begin at noon at Naperville Central.

An uneventful first half gave way to Barrington establishing itself on Central’s half of midfield after halftime. The Fillies found quality shots to be elusive, however, as the Redhawks’ back four of Ellie Fricke, Amanda Alberts, Meredith Tunney, and Kayla Rowan forced Barrington to settle for shots from distance that keeper Abby Hershik handled throughout the team’s 11th shutout of the season.

“They had two really good forwards that put us under a lot of pressure,” Ellis said of Barrington’s Molly Pfeiffer and Jenna Szczesny. “But we weren’t pushing up high enough with our outside mids.  Me and Sabrina (Cisneros) needed to push up higher so they felt threatened and would drop off of us a little. We did a better job of that after we scored that goal.”

“(Szczesny) is a handful. She’s a pretty nice No. 2 when you have (Molly Pfeiffer) as your No. 1,” Watson said. “Amanda (Alberts) was a warrior today in back and all four of our backs had ample opportunity. Our back four does a great job and our two center mids (Grace Orndorff and Alison Kincaide) never come off the field. They allow our back four to stay on forwards because they don’t let midfielders flow around too much.

“But it’s a team effort and our girls do a pretty good job of making teams beat us from the outside. The shots have got to be easy shots. We have to make our goalkeeper’s life easy.”

Barrington had a Szczesny goal waved off in the first half when the sophomore was whistled for a foul. Mia Calamari sent a freekick off the post in the game’s final minute and Pfeiffer buried the follow-up but the goal was negated on a foul called on the Fillies in the goalmouth.

“I didn’t agree with either of those calls but we have to play well enough to take the result out of the officials’ hands,” Stengren said. “Regardless of that, we need to overcome it. But we showed up with no energy. Maybe it’s because we played four games in five games but the kids we need to play well didn’t have it today.”

“We had the ball more but we didn’t create a lot of chances. Yesterday (a 3-0 Barrington win over Loyola) was a high-speed, high-energy game and I think it took a lot more out of us than I thought.”