Redhawks shut out by Huskies in DVC showdown
By Matt Le Cren

For Naperville Central to advance far in the playoffs, the Redhawks are going to need to find people who can finish with regularity.

People like Christa Szalach and Cora Climo.

Unfortunately for the Redhawks, Szalach and Climo do their finishing for crosstown rival Naperville North and lately they’ve been finishing off Naperville Central.

The two seniors did it again Friday. Szalach scored the game-winning goal and Climo added an insurance goal on a booming free kick to lift the Huskies to a 2-0 victory at Memorial Stadium.

If that has a familiar ring to it, it’s because Szalach and Climo did the same thing six days previously, when Naperville North knocked off the Redhawks 3-0 to win the Naperville Invitational on the same field.

This victory gave the Huskies at least a share of their second straight DuPage Valley Conference championship. North (13-0-2, 6-0) can win the title outright by beating Glenbard North at home on Tuesday. The Redhawks (13-4-3, 5-1), who shared the DVC crown with the Huskies last year, need to beat West Chicago and hope the Huskies lose in order to get a piece of the title.

“It’s awesome,” Szalach said. “It’s really exciting. It’s the first time for our senior class to win outright.”

The match actually began Thursday night but was suspended by lightning with the score 0-0 and 14:49 left in the first half.

Before the postponement, the Redhawks were holding their own and would have grabbed the lead if not for Fiona Baenziger’s diving save to tip a 21-yard shot by Central’s Autumn Muckenhirn around the left post.

Things were much different when play resumed as the Huskies dominated most of the rest of the match.

“They didn’t look as good last night as they did today,” Naperville Central coach Ed Watson said. “I think that we came out last night with a great deal of intensity.

“You don’t get timeouts in soccer very often but they got one last night and our intensity was not enough because they played very well today and kept the ball in our end more than they were able to do the night before.”

The Huskies played much more fluidly than they did even in Saturday’s win over the Redhawks. The visitors enjoyed a 16-5 edge in shots and didn’t allow the Redhawks any shots in the second half. Baenziger, who recorded her sixth shutout, touched the ball just once after intermission and that was to take a free kick after a Redhawks foul.

“I would just say that Saturday was not our best game ever,” Szalach said. “At practice we kind of worked on holding the ball and doing what we needed to fix from Saturday. I think today we just really came out strong and were able to regroup and come back and play our game and do the best that we could.”

Szalach did her part, scoring her 10th goal of the season – and second game-winner against Central – when she jumped and angled a header past Redhawks goalie Abby Hershik with 27:42 left in the second half. Sophomore Claire Hilburger, who had another solid effort off the bench, got the assist when she tracked down a loose ball in the right corner before lofting a cross in front to Szalach.

“Claire Hilburger, she had a phenomenal ball, she kind of lofted it in and I was able to get my head on it,” Szalach said. “It rolled right into the side netting.”

It’s the kind of play Naperville North coach Steve Goletz has come to expect from the Purdue recruit.

“Christa’s always scored big goals for us,” Goletz said. “That’s what Christa does. She has a knack for finding that space and keeps putting it away when it means the most.

“She gives us a little bit of a sense of relief that we were able to get one in against them and then I think we didn’t necessarily relax but we loosened up a little and you could see [the Huskies] started to do some more creative stuff.

“I thought there were a lot of great individual efforts which led to a pretty impressive team effort tonight. To limit Central to a very few scoring chances and have a bunch that we generated and almost put away is great.”

The most notable of those individual efforts came from Climo, who now has two goals, both against Central, after ripping a 35-yard free kick from far out on the left wing over the Redhawks wall and into the upper right corner of the net with 5:40 remaining.

“We had two great goals,” Goletz said. “Christa’s been phenomenal this year and [got] another head goal. Claire Hilburger comes in and does great stuff on the right side for us and gets balls served in.

“And then Cora’s goal speaks for itself. That’s probably one of the best shots I’ve seen in a long time. To hit a free kick 35 yards into the far corner upper 90 was absolutely awesome.

“She’s so dangerous on restarts and I’m so glad when she’s able to put them away because she’s such a big part of our team.”

Climo has been doing damage with her strong leg for four years now and is no stranger to scoring big goals. She blasted in a 43-yard free kick in the first Central game and put this shot in the only place it could go and result in a goal.

“I practice free kicks a lot in practice and it’s one of my favorite parts of the game, so I just got on it and shot it,” said Climo, who just missed scoring again from a similar spot three minutes later. “It’s kind of hard to tell [where it is going to go] but I just saw it go in and it’s really exciting.”

That kind of excitement is what has been missing for Naperville Central, which has scored 15 times in its last 14 matches. As good as the Redhawks are defensively – and they have one of the toughest groups in the area to score on – they know it will be difficult to succeed in the postseason without a more robust attack.

“We are at the end of our season,” Watson said. “We are not going to suddenly become an offensive team. We need to find a way to keep the other team at zero and find a bad bounce or corner kick them to death.

“[North’s] goalkeeper was bored. She did not touch the ball in the second half except when Nikki [Alore] hit her and they called the foul.”

The Redhawks’ effort on Thursday, however, made Goletz a little nervous.

“Saturday and the first half of yesterday’s/today’s game I thought Naperville Central did some great things,” Goletz said. “They took it to us at times and controlled the tempo of the game.

“I think that they did some really good things against us last night that made it hard for us and I felt we were sloppy at times last night. Last night Fiona makes a great save to keep it 0-0 and we come back tonight and I thought from the first whistle tonight the girls set the tone that they were obviously going to have a better performance as a group and I think they did that.”

Baenziger wasn’t the only keeper who made a big save to keep the game scoreless. Hershik came up huge on a play eerily similar to the one on which she was hurt in Saturday’s game.

In that contest, Hershik suffered a badly bruised shin and had to leave after 31 seconds when she was cleated while stopping Zoe Swift on a breakaway.

With 31:30 left in the second half Friday, Abbie Boswell again sprang Swift on a breakaway up the middle. This time Hershik aggressive sprinted out to meet Swift and blocked the shot with her noggin, the ball caroming 30 yards back up the field.

“Great save. She saved it with her face,” Watson said. “She’s a brave kid. You know you have a goalkeeper when they’re the ones running and putting their body in front of the ball instead of running and getting their body away from the ball.

“When she made the save I felt like, ‘okay, now we’re even’ because their kid made a great save on Autumn last night that certainly was heading in. So now each keeper has kept their team at zero.”

Hershik, a sophomore, finished with five saves, including two stops on Swift in which she positioned herself perfectly to catch hard shots.

As is typical for many goalies who feel they should get to every shot, Hershik was frustrated when Szalach’s shot beat her. But Watson will use that as teaching tool.

“Eventually, I would like her to become confident enough that the ball that Szalach scored on, she comes out and gets, because it was up in the air a long time,” Watson said. “That’s the one where all the other girls have to wait for the ball to get to their head. [Szalach] doesn’t. She can go up and get it.

“That’s the next phase of [Hershik’s] progression and the nice thing is she’s not at the end of her playing career. She still has lots of room to improve and lots of time to do it.”