Huskies post first shutout in 3-0 win over Morton

 

By Matt Le Cren
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Most soccer players score goals with their feet. Some score with their head.

Alex Hammond used a different method on Tuesday. The Oak Park and River Forest senior knocked the ball into the net with her stomach to break open a close game and help lift the host Huskies to a 3-0 victory over Morton.

The goal, which gave OPRF a 2-0 lead with 16:30 left in the second half, was a result of a perfect corner kick from senior Sara McCall. Hammond ran in front of the ball in the crease and the ball hit her in the stomach and went in.

“I had a couple of nice shots [in the first half that didn’t go in] and was just really frustrated,” Hammond said. “I really wanted a goal for the game and I use whatever works. So it could be my stomach, it could be my foot. Whatever works.”

OPRF coach Paul Wright said Hammond’s goal is a lesson for all soccer players.

“If you put yourself in the right position, the ball’s going to hit you and it probably will go in,” he said.

Hammond’s goal was part of a three-goal flurry by the Huskies (3-1), who outshot Morton (1-3-1) by a 23-2 margin but didn’t get on the board until the 55th minute of a match they played in bone-chilling cold without nine of their players due to injuries or spring break vacations.

“It’s just been tough not having all of our players back,” Huskies forward Emily Gullo said. “I just think that with what we have, we’re working on it and developing new players, which is a good thing, but we still have a lot to work on.”

But Gullo, who scored two more goals and now has seven during the Huskies’ three-game winning streak, wasn’t surprised to see Hammond score in such an unusual way.

“I think that’s one of Alex’s specialties, just running through the ball and hoping that it goes somewhere, but it worked,” Gullo said. “Sarah played a great ball.”

Indeed, McCall was a major catalyst in the Huskies’ ability to finally crack a stubborn defensive effort by the Mustangs, registering two assists. The other came when she and Hammond sprung Gullo for the first goal of the game at the 25:29 mark of the second half.

McCall started the play by making a run through the right side of the midfield before passing to Hammond just across the stripe. Hammond, who had her back to the goal, tapped it to Gullo, who sprinted past the defense before dribbling around Morton goalie Lily Martinez and scoring into the empty net.

“Sara McCall I think has flown under the radar the last few years, but she had 12 or 15 crosses in today,” Wright said. “She doesn’t get a lot of acknowledgement out there but she can drive the ball on a corner kick and she can drive the ball in on a cross.”

In fact, while she wasn’t credited with an assist, McCall set up the third OPRF goal, which Gullo scored with 5:25 left. McCall’s corner kick from the right side went straight to Gullo, whose shot was blocked by a defender. Gullo immediately hammered the rebound into the upper right corner of the net.

That perhaps got out some of the frustration the Huskies felt after dominating the first half but having nothing to show for it. Part of that was the play of Martinez, who made four of her nine saves before intermission, including a diving stop of a hard shot from Gullo in the fifth minute and then a tremendous save on Hammond’s shot from point-blank range that came on a rebound of a 35-yard drive from Gullo that hit the crossbar with 12:05 to go.

“It took us a while to develop a rhythm,” Wright said. “We’ve got six girls out of town, we’ve still got four or five injuries, so we’ve had to take players and move them to different positions, which always looks good in practice but you don’t work out all the kinks and all the rust until you finally get a game in. And it just took some time.

“We had a couple opportunities in the first half, maybe five or six that I thought were pretty great chances, but we missed the finishing touch. But the girls kept at it, the goals came in the second half.”

“It was great,” Hammond said of the second half. “I think we started out a little bit slow, but toward the end I think we came back together. We got it going.”

The OPRF defense didn’t miss a beat despite being without starting sweeper Renata Voci. Central midfielder Kate McCole moved back to take her place and excelled along with Rachel Durbin, Dorothe Franklin and Katherine Skrine, whose play enabled junior goalie Katy Oldach to record the club’s first shutout without having to make a save. Oldach was playing in place of starter Darcy Hargadon, who was out of town.

Gullo replaced McCole in the midfield but still found ways to do plenty of damage.

“She’s a hard-working player,” Wright said of Gullo, who has decided not to play college soccer. “Her effort [is] all over the field. You can see it out there. She’s trying to create things, very unselfish, passing the ball around, moving it.

“I think last year she put a lot of stuff on her shoulders. She realized this year if I move the ball around it gives me more of a chance to get free for a header. You saw today, she had four or five headers that could have been goals.”

“It’s nice to play with her because she always knows where the ball should go,” Hammond said.

Gullo even got to play goalie for 15 seconds late in the game when Oldach received a yellow card for knocking down Morton’s Maggie Avila on a breakaway with 2:13 left.

Gullo, whose older brother, Jim, played goalie for the Air Force Academy, was between the pipes when Avila launched her 20-yard free kick, but the ball sailed harmlessly high.

While the conditions weren’t ideal and the team was far from full-strength, Hammond said she doesn’t mind these spring break contests.

“I think it gives us a chance to bring up the sophomores, which sometimes is nice just to get them used to varsity soccer,” Hammond said. “They’re usually not our hardest games but we always come out and give 100 percent effort.”