Huskies defend well but fall to Neuqua at North Central

By Matt Le Cren
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Naperville North did a lot of things right defensively Wednesday night, bottling up the middle and not giving Neuqua Valley’s talented offensive players any room to roam inside the penalty area.

That still wasn’t enough. The Wildcats got a first-half goal from junior Meghan Kelley and a shutout from freshman goalie Courtney Keefer to win 1-0 at North Central College.

The scary thing was Neuqua Valley (2-0) did it despite dressing only 14 players as six players sat out with minor injuries.

“We haven’t even come out full force yet, so I’m excited,” Kelley said. “It just gives us a good idea of what we can do. It’s only our second game so there’s a lot of things we need to work on, but we’ve played two really good teams [the Wildcats beat Barrington 3-0 on Saturday] and come out on top on both. It just shows how good we can be.”

Naperville North defenders Adrienne Schertz, Abby Mangefrida, Jamie Meno and Kirsten Anderson focused on stopping Neuqua scoring threats Gianna Dal Pozzo and Alexa Wilde, and North coach Brent Terada was pleased with the effort.

“I thought Jamie Meno did a fantastic job tonight,” he said. “She defended and kept us organized and I thought Cora Climo played very well at center back. Neuqua dominated possession in the middle third of the field but I give credit to my girls in back. They didn’t panic. They kept girls in front, played our game plan.”

With Wilde and Dal Pozzo held to just three shots combined, it was left to Kelley to do the damage.

Sophomore midfielder Hope D’Addario saw Kelley alone on the right wing and quickly got her the ball just outside the box. Kelley’s 20-yard shot, which Neuqua Valley coach Joe Moreau said was intended to be a cross, flew over the head of Huskies goalie Abby Green and into the top left corner of the net with 23:07 left in the first half.

“We pretty much just passed the ball around and I was wide-open,” Kelley said. “They left me wide-open the whole game. Maybe they underestimated we could play the ball that big, so [the Wildcats] got it over to me and I shot it and scored.”

“We talked about getting crosses off and Meghan did that,” Moreau said. “She got a cross off and the wind pushed it a little bit to our advantage.”

The Wildcats gladly accepted any advantage the wind may have given them because, while they enjoyed a 15-4 shot advantage over the Huskies (3-2), most of those tries came from long range and Green was up to the task. The senior made nine saves, including tricky stops on Kelley and Dal Pozzo that she knocked around the post.

“She’s a quality keeper,” Moreau said of Green. She made some nice saves. You have to give credit to North. We didn’t penetrate a whole lot.”

“They’re such a good team,” Terada said of Neuqua. “They were missing some key players but they have skilled players all over the field.  I like the fact that we only gave up one goal tonight. I don’t think we gave up more than three or four legitimate chances.”

Moreau would have liked to see his Wildcats play a little more intelligently on Wednesday.

“Defensively we played very solidly and I thought Hope did a real nice job in the midfield,” Moreau said. “We have to play a little smarter soccer. That wasn’t a very smart soccer game on our part.

“We were panicking a little bit at times. There are some decent things that happened in the second half but we’ve got to put a better effort out there.”

The Wildcats list of walking wounded include senior defenders senior defenders Lisa Nuccio and Shannon Pimmel and sophomore midfielder Shannon Donlon and Brooke Ksiaszek, all of whom should be back within a couple of weeks.

But Neuqua was playing its first game with Dal Pozzo, who is just returning from playing with her regional O.D.P. team in Europe, and was without sophomore forward Zoey Goralski, who was training with the junior national team.

“Right now we’re just looking to get all our talent under control and figure out how we all play together,” Kelley said. “We have a really talented group so we can go far.”

One of the reasons for that is an offense that might be more diversified than people think. Wilde and stopper Megan Oyster, who is deadly on free kicks and scored twice against Barrington, are Division I players while Dal Pozzo and Goralski have national reputations. But as Kelley showed in this match, any number of players can deliver a decisive strike.

“I honestly think we’re going to have multiple scorers,” Kelley said. “Everyone is capable of putting the ball in the back of the net, so I think [the scoring] is going to be scattered all around.”

Naperville North had only two real glimpses of getting the equalizer. With 17:45 left in the second half, senior forward Tori Novak briefly got the ball away from Oyster but Neuqua’s Sydney Tappin got to it and knocked it out of bounds before Novak could get a shot off.

Three minutes later the Huskies had their best chance when sophomore midfielder Cora Climo sent a free kick from 32 yards out into the box. Sophomore Christa Szalach got her head on it but nodded it over the crossbar.

“I thought the work-rate we got from (midfielders) Christa Szalach, Emily Bromegen, and Jessica Schmit was phenomenal tonight,” Terada said. “I give those girls a lot of credit for slowing down Wilde and even when Oyster made some big runs forward they were able to contain her and turn her back.

“We’ll take this game as a learning experience for the end of the year. We know we’re a team that has to out-work you or at least be ready to battle because we just don’t have a team that can connect fifteen passes in the middle part of the field. We have to play with intensity for eighty minutes in order to compete. That’s what we rely on.

“We tried some things tonight and some worked and some didn’t. Hopefully by watching the film we’ll have an idea what might work against (Neuqua) if we should happen to see them in the state playoffs.”