Seniors spark fast start as Lions roll past Huskies

 

 

By Matt Le Cren

Now this is how you celebrate Senior Day.

Audrey Anfield recorded her second hat trick in three games, Abbie Pasquinelli had a goal and an assist, Ari Kowalski set up another goal and goalie Sam Kopping recorded the shutout as host Lyons Township rolled to a 6-0 win over Oak Park and River Forest on Tuesday at West Field in LaGrange.

Those four players happen to be the only seniors on the LT roster and they wasted no time in taking control of the West Suburban Conference Silver Division match. The Lions scored three goals in the first 5:19 and never looked back in wrapping up second place in the WSC Silver.

“That was awesome,” Pasquinelli said. “I honestly don’t know [how it happened]. We had not that good of a warm-up.

“We have our huddles before the game and basically we were just like, ‘we’ve got to pick it up on Senior Night.’ We know Oak Park is good and…we didn’t want to lose on our Senior Night.”

The tone was set and the outcome all but decided in the early going.

LT (12-4-2, 5-1) scored just 24 seconds into the contest with some nifty passing that culminated in Pasquinelli sending a cross from the right endline to a wide-open Anfield for a tap-in goal.

Two minutes later, LT shredded the OPRF defense again. This time Emily Lange fired a hard shot from the right side of the box. Huskies goalie Elise Delligrazie made a diving save but Anfield scored on the rebound for a 2-0 lead.

Lange then made it 3-0 at the 34:41 mark when she poked in a short shot off a corner kick from junior Grace Nasenbenny.

“Maybe it was Senior Day, maybe it was one of the few nice days we’ve had,” Lions coach Bill Lanspeary said. “I don’t know, but we certainly came out ready to play today.

“We were focused and we played very well. To finish those chances early kind of set the tone and really took them out from early on, but they’re a team that will continue to fight, so we knew that wasn’t it.”

It wasn’t it – for the LT offense. The Lions continued to pepper Delligrazie, who in making 12 saves did well to keep the final margin from being much worse, and snuffed any thoughts of a comeback by extending the lead to 4-0 with 2:57 to go in the first half.

Junior C.C. Holbert made a nifty move to beat a defender on the left endline and passed to Anfield, who completed her hat trick with another tap-in.

Anfield has scored six of her eight goals in the past week. She also had a hat trick in a 7-0 win over Proviso West. This hat trick, coming as it did against a usually tough defensive team, was much more impressive.

“I was just so shocked,” Anfield said. “It wraps up my high school career perfectly for me. It’s a perfect way to end things for me.”

How did she make it look so easy?

“We’re doing really well connecting up top with the forwards and the midfield and passing balls in and making runs,” Anfield said. We’re doing well with that.”

Indeed, that’s what led to Anfield’s opening goal.

“It was funny because all of us seniors got to touch the ball and I got in the corner and I saw Audrey coming up and I was like, ‘I’m just going to go for it,’” Pasquinelli said. “She knocked it in and it was sick.”

Lanspeary was pleased to see Anfield, who didn’t crack the starting lineup until this spring, have such success in her final regular season home game.

“I’m thrilled for her because she’s a kid that’s worked really hard and doesn’t score that many goals, though six in the last [few] games, but has been a little snake-bitten,” Lanspeary said. “She really capitalized and did some nice things.”

As did Pasquinelli. The co-captain was all over the field against the Huskies and combined with the Indiana-bound Kowalski on the fifth LT goal, which came with 31:03 left in the second half.

Kowalski sent a pass from the middle of the field to Pasquinelli racing into the box on the right wing and Pasquinelli beat Delligrazie with an 18-yard shot to the lower left corner.

“She’s been playing really, really well,” Lanspeary said of Pasquinelli. “We had been playing her for a couple years up top because she’s so good up there, but we’ve discovered in the middle she’s great at combining and controlling the play and attacking going forward. She’s been great.”

Pasquinelli’s goal was representative of the relentlessness she played with. Eight minutes earlier Delligrazie had thwarted her with a great diving save but she just kept coming, making dangerous runs and accurate passes.

“I haven’t really stepped up and played like I can my last three years so this year I’ve been going as hard as I can,” Pasquinelli said. “This is my senior year and I’m not playing next year [in college]. I thought I played really well today. I’m glad that I scored so that was cool.”

Pasquinelli was not as happy about having to watch the last 16 minutes from the bench after being ejected for elbowing OPRF’s Lauren Wilkes.

But the Lions didn’t miss a beat, scoring one shorthanded goal and nearly getting two others. Sophomore Tina Cevizovic capped the scoring on a breakaway with 5:06 to go off a long pass from Erin Fitzgerald.

Eight minutes earlier, Lange got around Delligrazie but hit the crossbar with a shot from a tough angle, and Cevizovic barely missed adding the seventh goal when she shot wide left with 1:25 remaining.

Afterward, Lanspeary told his seniors “I don’t know if you can pick a better way to end your career at West Field.”

The Lions, who finish the regular season Thursday at Rolling Meadows, will host a Class 3A Regional next week, but it will be at Bennett Field.

For the Huskies (11-6-1, 3-3), who had won three of their last four and outscored their last two opponents by a combined 11-1, the uncharacteristic result was a wake-up call.

“We had a couple breakdowns in the beginning,” OPRF coach Ignacio Ponce said. “The outside defense pushed up too far which forced the outside backs to shift and the back midfield line didn’t drop and left [Anfield] wide open.

“Two or three passes combined to score a simple goal and I think that was the same thing that happened with the second goal.

“That being said, obviously LT has always been a powerhouse and they’re really good. For some reason our girls are really intimidated by them. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like we really give them a lot of respect and we don’t play up to the level that we know how to play.”

The story was similar on the offensive end. The Huskies mustered just one shot on frame, a 50-yard free kick by Wren Osler that Kopping saved on a bounce at the 24:25 mark of the second half.

Junior forward Kristen Laible was the only Huskie able to put any pressure on the LT back line of Nasenbenny, Holbert, Catherine King, Liza Gabrek and Sarah Drew. She got around a defender in the 28th minute and got the ball past Kopping just before the two collided, only to watch King calmly clear the slow roller out of danger.

Laible also got free in front in the 35th minute but Kopping dove out to cut off a cross from Julia Weiss before it could get to her.

Then in the 50th minute, Laible was involved in a play that summed up the visitors’ frustrations. She made a nifty move around a defender and was about to take an open 12-yard shot when she slipped on the grass.

“I’m proud of my girls no matter what the outcome of this game was,” Ponce said. “They always play hard. The individual effort is there. It is just we just have to work together as a unit.”

The Huskies travel to Maine South on Thursday to finish the regular season. They are the eighth seed at the Class 3A Hinsdale Central Sectional and will open postseason play May 14 with a regional semifinal match at No. 9 seed Wheaton North.

A victory there will set up a regional final matchup with top-seeded Hinsdale Central.

“I’m hoping that we can regroup,” Ponce said. “We’ve got about a week before the first postseason game so I’m hoping we can regroup and work on a few things that we can improve the team on and go from there.”