Mustangs draw with SC North in home opener
By Matt Le Cren

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If the first ever meeting between Metea Valley and St. Charles North is any indication, a new and exciting rivalry is in the offing.

The two sides played to a 1-1 draw Tuesday night in an Upstate Eight Conference crossover in Aurora, with host Metea Valley scoring on the first shot of the game and St. Charles North pulling even in the 31st minute before controlling the action in the second half.

“I thought we fought hard through the entire game,” said St. Charles North coach Eric Willson, whose club was making its 2012 debut. “I thought our soccer got better in the second half. We started to do more things that I know we’re capable of doing.

“Part of it can be that it’s your first time out and we’re playing in a very tough place against a good team, so I’m proud of the way the guys played. I think their goal is to win every game, but conference game on the road, you earn a draw, I don’t think you can be incredibly disappointed.”

The North Stars (0-0-1) were disappointed by how the game ended, but the fans weren’t.

The visitors nearly won the game in the closing seconds when Justin Stanko boomed a 57-yard free kick toward the head of striker Kyle Swanson, who was open in front of the Metea goal.

But Metea Valley goalie Gabriel Gongora-Falla came out and punched the ball high into the air just before it got to Swanson and time ran out as the ball came back down.

“I’m lucky I’ve got my arms to use,” Gongora-Falla said. “I just had to time it well. I knew I was not going to be able to catch it – it was coming on hard – so I had to pop it up. I had to get something on it to make sure that he wasn’t the first one there.”

It was the seventh save of the game for Gongora-Falla, who made several good stops and hard-hit shots from long range in the second half. The senior is in his third varsity season but first as the full-time starter after splitting time with the graduated Derek Carothers the past two years.

“He’s a born leader and he does it very, very well,” Metea Valley coach Josh Robinson said. “He’s talkative and he comes up with some amazing saves.

“It’s been fun to watch him. Seeing him the past couple years he’s just matured more and more and now as senior he’s doing everything he’s supposed to be doing. He was doing it as a junior, but he’s just grown.”

So, too, have Stanko and Swanson for the North Stars, both literally and figuratively.

The two seniors give St. Charles North a significant height advantage at both ends of the field, with the 6-4 Stanko anchoring the back line and the 6-5 Swanson providing a huge target up front. Both are starters on North’s basketball team.

“They obviously bring some serious size,” Willson said. “Kyle is a great target player and Justin provides us all kinds of good height in the back, so we certainly like having a little bit of size in those two spots.”

Stanko can hurt teams with his head and his feet and he used both with effect against the Mustangs (0-0-2), who had a hard time dealing with him. He consistently targeted his forwards with booming free kicks – his longest boot went 70 yards in the air - and proved deadly on headers, scoring the tying goal with 9:31 left in the first half by nodding in a free kick from Phillip LeGare.

“He’s an excellent player,” Gongora-Falla said. “We had a hard time to trying to cope with that. Thankfully, he only got one header off on goal.”

 Stanko found the back of the net six times last fall, all on headers, and hopes to continue using his head this season.

“That benefits the team more, but also in the back I’ve got to be strong, so I’ve got to play both ways,” Stanko said. “Going for corners [our height] is so helpful for the team because you’ve got four or five guys wanting to guard us. It’s just difficult for the other team because you’re also leaving guys open which is creating opportunities.”

Stanko was hoping to create just such an opportunity on the game’s final play, and although Gongora-Falla thwarted those plans, the serve was right where the North Stars wanted it.

“I was hoping [Swanson would score],” Stanko said. “I saw that ball floating in the air and Kyle going up for it. That’s the kid you want going up for a head ball. We want our big guys going up for head balls.”

And that’s the kicker for St. Charles North – they have tall players and most teams, Metea included, do not.

“No we don’t,” Robinson said. “Eric’s fortunate. There’s something in the water there; they always have big guys.

“But it was a good game. It was an even result, which I think we’re both in the beginning of the year [having] things to work on, but there are positives to take away from it as well.”

One positive for Metea was junior forward Christopher Freeman, who bagged his team’s first goal of the campaign. The Mustangs were held to a 0-0 tie in their season opener Monday at Hinsdale Central, but scored on the game’s first shot when senior Jake Goehring intercepted a North Stars goal kick and passed quickly to Freeman, who took two fast touches before drilling a 15-yard shot past St. Charles North keeper Bill Larsen for a 1-0 in the sixth minute.

Though the Mustangs were not able to mount much of an attack after that, Robinson thinks Freeman could be a major catalyst.

“We hope so,” Robinson said. “The thing we’ve been preaching is [putting on] just a bit of pressure. We saw it when we played pressure yesterday and it helped us get some opportunities. Today, pressure got the goal that we wanted. We continued to pressure but I think we fell off a little bit. Our legs got tired.”

Though both teams took a huge hit from graduation, neither expects to fall off much from their stellar 2011 form. Metea Valley graduated its first senior class but the Mustangs believe the foundation for long-term success has been laid.

“Those seniors were awesome,” Gongora-Falla said. “I miss them very much, but we’ve got a great group this year. Guys are really stepping up and filling those roles and I want to do better every year.

“I feel like we can do a lot this year. I feel like this team is a very good team. I have a very good feeling about these guys, so I’m just trying to do my part.”

“This team is going to work,” Robinson stated. “Not that past teams didn’t, but the one thing we know with these guys is we’ve had great intensity through training, we’ve had great competition among positions. We played 18 players today so we’re deep.”

St. Charles North, which won its sixth regional title in seven years last fall, is similarly high hopes.

“The expectation is to win,” Willson said. “I think there’s tradition here of what we do and I think we have players who are very proud of who they are and they want to make a name for themselves, and I think they’re going to work as hard as they can to do that.”