Huskies advance to Invite semifinals with win over Geneva
By Matt Le Cren

Despite entering this year’s Naperville Invitational with a sub-.500 record, Geneva won its three-team group and was determined to prove it belonged among the seven elite quarterfinal teams that had much gaudier records and pedigrees.

The Vikings did demonstrate a lot of determination, tenacity and talent, but the one thing they didn’t have was Abbie Boswell.

Boswell plays for Naperville North and as she has done so often in her young career, the sophomore striker made all the difference, scoring three goals to lead the host Huskies to a 4-2 victory.

The win advanced Naperville North (10-0-2) into Friday’s semifinals at Naperville Central, where they will take on Neuqua Valley, a 4-0 winner over Hinsdale Central. Barrington will play Naperville Central in the other semifinal.

Boswell, who now has 18 goals this season, tallied the first two goals for the Huskies, who led 3-0 at halftime. The first came on a header, a rare thing for Boswell, at the 21:23 mark.

Jill Van Kampen sent a long high ball from the left wing into the right corner to Claire Hilburger, whose bouncing ball in front found the head of Boswell for a six-yard nod.

“I was lucky to score with my head,” Boswell said. “That was an exciting one and then I got two with my left foot.”

The left foot is Boswell’s preferred instrument of destruction and she used it to hammer a 16-yard shot past Geneva keeper Samantha Hauser with 15:52 left in the opening period. That completed a beautiful give-and-go between Boswell and fellow striker Zoe Swift in which Boswell got the ball in space in the midfield and passed ahead to Swift, who immediately returned the pass as Boswell charged past her up the middle.

“Zoe’s great,” Boswell said. “She gives me a ton of assists. She’s great with that and I try to give her assists too, but we just work really well together and I’m really happy that we’re able to have such a great relationship and score goals together.”

Naperville North coach Steve Goletz is just has happy to have two supremely talented scorers on his team.

“To have two of those girls up top, if we can hang on long enough to defend and get stuff organized, I like my chances against anybody in terms of those two,” Goletz said. “We’re lucky to have them and they’ve been very good and our supporting cast has allowed them to stay forward as much as possible and take as many chances as possible.

“You saw that again tonight. We were able to get the ball forward and there was a good 20 minutes in the first half there where we just kind of turned it on and [were] getting Zoe slotting through and Bos finishing and vice versa. It’s been fun to watch the two of them so far.”

While Swift didn’t find the back of the net herself, barely missing on several chances, including one poke that skimmed the top of the crossbar and another that was deflected around the post by a diving Hauser, she did record two more assists.

The second helper came with 9:07 to go in the opening half when she passed to a wide-open Emily Bromagen, who ripped a 28-yard shot into the upper right corner to make it 3-0. It was the second goal of the season for Bromagen, who works tirelessly to control the ball in the midfield but rarely ventures forward.

“That was a great goal, just a bullet that went straight in,” Boswell said. “That was a beautiful shot.

“[Bromagen] is amazing. She works so hard in the middle. She constantly runs everywhere and then she has those amazing shots that she does every once in awhile. You’re just like, ‘Whoa.’ I enjoy that.”

Goletz enjoyed much of the first half in which the Huskies dominated in all phases of the game. The entire starting lineup played well, as did key reserves Hilburger and Maria Grygleski.

“Claire Hilburger did a great job, somebody who hasn’t played a ton of minutes but who I thought tonight played her best game hands-down, got up and down the flank as an outside mid,” Goletz said. “The girls are going to have extra space because teams obviously key on Abbie and Zoe and I think that today in that first half stretch we were able to, once we got settled down, have some time on the ball and have confidence.”

But the Vikings (6-8-1) also maintained confidence and stunned the Huskies by scoring two goals exactly four minutes apart in the second half, taking advantage of two defensive miscues.

First, senior Amanda Lulek stole the ball about 45 yards out and raced up the field, aggressively splitting two defenders before beating Naperville North goalie Fiona Baenziger with a 16-yard shot with 27:27 to go.

The second goal was more of a forced error as the Vikings pressured the Huskies into making a mistake.

Junior Hope Goodman took a ball deep into the left side of the box before rolling a cross into the crease, where a defender attempted to boot the ball out of the box. But sophomore Mary Landry intercepted the clearing pass just inside the top of the box and calmly took her time to line up a shot before rifling the ball between the lunging Baenziger and the right post.

“We have yet to play a consistent game the whole way through,” Boswell said. “Our second half of this game wasn’t as good as it should have been. They got two goals in the second half so it just shows that every minute of every game you have to constantly try your best or else the other team can come up like they did.”

Lulek, an Iowa recruit who leads the Vikings in scoring, wasn’t surprised at the comeback.

“I am beyond proud of the way we came out in the second half,” Lulek said. “We went down 3-0 in the first half and if we can come out with the intensity that we came out with in the second half we will go so far.

“I just wish it wouldn’t take that half to get into it, but Naperville North is a respectable team. They’re reigning state champs. We’ll learn from these types of games. You learn how to play with the top teams. You learn how to play quick and I think we did amazing that second half.”

Geneva coach Megan Owens was proud of her team for the way the Vikings regrouped at halftime to become the first squad to score twice on the Huskies this season.

“The first half I think we were intimidated,” Owens said. “You’re playing the reigning state champs, the No. 1 ranked team and they’re a well-respected team and we didn’t really play our game and we talked about that at halftime.

“[The second half] we came out and played our game. We were concerned about us and not concerned about them and we did a lot of good things. We played a really intense game.

“We’re the first team to put two goals in on them and that’s awesome for my offense. We’ve been struggling to score and we’ve kind of made some switches and figured some things out.”

One thing the Vikings didn’t do was figure out how to stop Boswell, who quashed any thoughts of an upset when she completed her second hat trick of the season with 12:24 remaining.

Van Kampen again was the instigator, as her high ball from 50 yards out on the right wing bounced off a defender in the box. Boswell settled it and fired a hard, short shot off the hands of Hauser for the momentum-changing tally.

Delivering in the clutch is nothing new for Boswell. She expects to do it and so do her coaches.

“She’s so calm and she’s such a cool kid, too,” Goletz said. “She’s goofy, but when the whistle blows she is just relentless for 80 minutes and she makes us awfully dangerous.”

The Vikings, who will finish the tournament by playing Hinsdale Central on Friday night, could be a dangerous team going forward. Geneva is the seventh seed at the Hoffman Estates Sectional. They have already beaten No. 4 seed Conant and tied No. 3 seed Batavia.

“It was a tremendous team effort,” Owens said. “It would have been easy for a team down 3-0 at halftime to check out and we didn’t.

“We’ve played a ton of tough competition. I don’t think our record reflects our ability and I think some people in our sectional underestimated us and we’ve come so far.”

Lulek agreed.

“We played to our level today,” Lulek said. “We played pretty much to our best and if we can come out this strong, we’ll be great.”