Knights fall in face of Marian Central onslaught

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By Matt Le Cren

 Becca Hook was busy on Saturday, a lot busier than she would have liked.

The Chicago Christian goalkeeper spent much of the Knight’s Suburban Christian Conference match with visiting Marian Central Catholic under siege. The Hurricanes peppered her with 29 shots and cruised to a 5-0 victory.

“I got a good workout,” Hook said. “Preferably I’d never have to touch the ball but that doesn’t always happen.

“It was a really hard game. There are definitely spots where I can see that I need improvement in myself, but overall I think that I just tried my best.”

The margin of defeat would have been much greater if Hook hadn’t. The senior made some outstanding saves, including three on breakaways, and finished with 10 stops.

“She’s a good goalkeeper,” Chicago Christian coach Trevor Schans said. “She takes control of the box. Even some of their players made sure to mention to me after the game that they thought our keeper was very good, so that’s always nice to hear.”

But no amount of goaltending would have been enough for the Knights (5-3, 2-2), who were completely dominated. Christian did not get the ball past midfield in the first 15 minutes and went 32 minutes without mustering a shot. The hosts finished with only two shots, one each by Anica Pausma and Megan Wise.

Marian Central (4-7, 2-0) lost seven of its first nine matches this season before blowing out Montini 7-0 on Thursday. But that record is deceiving because the Hurricanes, a Class 2A school, played several games against Class 3A schools in the St. Francis and Huntley tournaments.

“For the first few games of the season we were experimenting a lot,” Marian coach Kristian Rockall said. “We had a lot of players missing and we played a lot of strong teams while we were still trying to figure things out, and the last week we’ve just started to take shape and start to understand the patterns of play that we’re trying to accomplish as a team. Still a long way to go but the job today that I asked them to do was not get any goals scored on us and to put a few in at the other end, so they did their jobs today which was good.”

Katie Przybysz and Amy Rechenberg scored in the first half for the Hurricanes and Susan Thomas quashed any thoughts the Knights may have had of a comeback by making it 3-0 with 35:09 left in the second half. Kaitlin Logan later tacked on two insurance goals as the visitors played ping pong with the Christian defenders.

“There was a lot of back and forth, a lot of clearing it and then just getting it right back [in on us] again,” Christian senior defender Lauren Kuipers said. “It was very tiring for the defense but we tried to keep it up as much as we could. But they’re a good team. They have good passing, just good balance on the field.”

That didn’t surprise Schans, who knew his team was in for a tough battle.

“I knew coming in that they were going to be very good,” Schans said. “They are just very disciplined, very structured, they know what they want to do with the ball, they have good first touch. You hope for a better result, but with a disciplined team like that you really have to be giving your best performance to limit their opportunities.”

The Knights, who are the only 1A team in the conference, weren’t at their best, though Schans said the effort was there.

“At halftime I said we need to connect passes,” Schans said. “Even if you have to take an extra touch, even if you do lose, try to do the right thing, connect passes and play to feet and be dangerous, and I thought we did a pretty good job of that, but there’s always room for improvement.

“You definitely have to have the right perspective and what I told them was pretty much the same as every game. You go into a game and it’s a challenge. Are you willing, [whether it’s] against teams that are better than you [or] against teams that are less skilled than you are, to learn and grow through the game? So a game like today where the team that we’re playing against is more skilled than us, are we willing to get better through this experience?

“I thought we got B-plus in that area today. We had a lot of good attitude, a lot of good effort, a lot of good individual performances, but we have to just collectively grow and do that as a unit, where everyone is giving their best performance even in a game where we’re overmatched.”

At least the Knights, who had a three-game winning streak snapped, have winnable games coming up Tuesday at Aurora Central Catholic and Wednesday at home against Montini.

“I think it should [seem easier after this] because we had to work really hard on this game,” Kuipers said. “Hopefully we can learn from it and be able to improve a lot.”

If they can, that will take some of the sting out of this defeat.

“I guess just knowing that I tried my hardest and that the rest of my team did also makes me be okay with it,” Hook said. “I can see areas where we need to work on and maybe I can help talk them through that.”