Lions win a wild one over Naperville North

 

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By Matt Le Cren

Lyons star midfielder Kelsey Holbert called her team’s 1-0 loss to Loyola in Sunday’s Pepsi Showdown championship game at Toyota Park “more than a minor disappointment” and put a lot of the blame on herself for having a penalty kick stopped by Ramblers goalie Carly Stevens.

So how did Holbert respond in her first outing since that setback? By stunning host Naperville North with a two-goal, one-assist performance Wednesday that helped the Lions (10-2-1) win a 4-3 thriller on the opening night of the Naperville Invitational.

Holbert now has 10 goals and the respect of just about every soccer coach around.

“She is a special kid,” said Naperville North coach Brent Terada, whose team had given up just three previous goals. “Holbert is as good as anybody around, but we need to be better defensively.”

That was the ironic thing about this marquee matchup of two outstanding defensive teams that had surrendered a combined seven goals coming in. Everyone figured it would be close, just not high-scoring.

“I can’t believe we gave up three goals against Naperville North and won,” LT coach Bill Lanspeary said. “That was a shootout that I didn’t see coming, especially after the first half. I don’t think anybody expected that.”

Holbert certainly didn’t, especially considering the Lions did not control the possession as much as they are used to.

“It was definitely kind of an up-and-down game,” Holbert said. “[That] was the most goals we’ve [had] scored on [us]. I think we were just persistent. We didn’t have our best rhythm throughout the game but we just had to stay with it, and to score four goals against a really strong team is nothing but good for the rest of the season.”

Holbert played a huge role in the Lions’ impressive second half effort. They took only eight shots in the match but scored on four, including their first three attempts after intermission.

The first goal came just 1:31 after the break when Elise Gordon booted a long ball that bounced into the box, where Holbert volleyed it over the head of Huskies keeper Abby Green to break a 1-1 tie.

Five minutes later, Holbert set up Mackie Furlong to make it 3-1. After getting the ball in the middle of the field 45 yards from the net, Holbert found an unguarded Furlong streaking into the box and the junior’s 12-yard shot rolled in between Green and the left post.

That kind of finishing touch was absent against Loyola, which became just the second team to shut out the Lions and the first to do so while Holbert was in the lineup.

“It was definitely hard,” Holbert said of the Pepsi loss. “We definitely wanted to win that one. It was a huge goal of ours. It was a setback, so we all knew this was a huge game for us to kind of get back on track and prove ourselves.”

Naperville North (6-3) proved something as well, mounting its first comeback of the season to tie the game at 3-3 thanks to two goals in a span of 2:27.

Hunter Drendel cut the gap to 3-2 by converting a penalty kick with 26:24 remaining and then Zoe Swift took a pass from Kaileen Debenham and beat LT goalie Maggie Orlowski with a 15-yard shot at the 23:57 mark. That came just 78 seconds after Swift had hit the crossbar with a shot.

“They have some good players up top, so I think our defense did well,” Holbert said. “[The LT back line] has been great all year and a lot of [Naperville’s] chances were on set plays, so everyone has to get back on those and stay with their marks, so I wouldn’t say it’s a bad defensive effort at all.”

The joy of becoming the first team to score three times on LT was short-lived for the Huskies, as Holbert tallied what turned out to be the game-winner 3:34 later on what the Lions called a great offensive play and Terada termed another breakdown.

This time it was Ari Kowalski who sent a long ball into the box to Lauren Moberg, who quickly flicked the ball over to Holbert, who shortly before had taken a corner kick, on the right wing. Holbert outran a defender into the box and scored from the six.

“We gave up a PK when we shouldn’t have but our goals were fantastic,” Lanspeary said. “I don’t know how [Holbert’s game-winner] came all the way through inside their box like that.”

“We don’t give up four very often,” Terada said. “They gave up one in the Pepsi, so on the one hand it’s great that we were able to score three and that we created other chances where we had looks at the goal, but it’s unacceptable for us to give up four against anybody.

“Mind you, I give them all the credit in the world. They’re a very, very good team, as they showed by getting to the finals of the Pepsi.

“They had two phenomenal goals that I give them all the credit in the world. One was awesome and the other was a bomb from distance and that was a pretty good goal too. But the other two were just completely our errors. That was a complete breakdown on our part; lack of concentration, lack of focus and we deserved to lose.”

It was Gordon who set the tone for the match when she boomed a 37-yard shot up the middle and over Green’s head into the upper right corner seven minutes into the contest. It was the first goal of the season for the standout senior stopper, who normally doesn’t take many shots and surprised Green by opening fire from such distance.

“I just kind of controlled it and I thought, ‘Why not?’” Gordon said. “I just wanted to test her and see if she could make that save and luckily I just relaxed enough that I didn’t shank it. I was just happy it went in.”

Everybody knows Holbert has a strong leg, but few know that Gordon does, too, so that gives LT another scoring option.

“[Gordon’s goal] was definitely exciting,” said Holbert, who barely missed a hat trick as she had one shot skim the top of the crossbar and another bang off the post. “It gave us a little boost of energy to come back in our first game back after the [Pepsi] loss.”

Though the Lions had the better of the play in the first half, it was the Huskies, who were playing without center back Tori Novak (back injury), who outshot them 5-3 before intermission. The host tied it 1-1 with 16:12 remaining on a goal by Cora Climo, who buried the rebound when Orlowski, who finished with five saves, could not hang on to a hard 45-yard shot by Jamie Meno.