Tigers fight to the end but fall 2-1 to Lake Forest
By Gary Larsen


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The last thing Wheaton Warrenville South needed in its third game in three days was a game on an expansive pitch against a team that knew how to use it, but that’s just what the Tigers got in Lake Forest.

The home team Scouts played terrific possession soccer throughout, held off a late Tigers’ surge, and won 2-1 to advance to Saturday’s quarterfinal round of this year’s Pepsi Showdown.

“Credit to Lake Forest, absolutely,” Tigers coach Guy Callipari said. “And once they got the lead, they utilized the width and waited for pressure, and then played give-and-go’s around that pressure because they knew we didn’t have the legs.”

After a scoreless first half, the Scouts took a 1-0 lead on a Mackenzie Mick goal at 46 minutes, when the big defender took a corner kick feed and buried it from 16 yards out. Lake Forest got what ultimately held up as the game-winning goal from senior captain Catherine Traut, on a play that typified the kind of soccer that coach Ty Stuckslager likes his girls to play.

At 63 minutes, 30 yards from the Tigers’ goal, midfielder Abby Shipp played a ball ahead to space where Kali Polich stepped onto it between two defenders and centered a similarly sweet feed to Traut.

“Kali Polich settled it perfectly and the she had a nice set to me,” Traut said. “I brought it down and saw a little opening, so I took it.”

Traut’s goal from 16 yards out gave the Scouts a 2-0 lead, and with a defense that has only given up six goals in 10 games, Lake Forest was sitting in a good place.

Senior captain and central defender Marina Katz is a rock-solid leader in back, and she’s surrounded by players like Mick, Lucy Edwards, and Sydney Johnston – all sophomores but far from

“They’re young but they’re really good. They have experience and they know what they’re doing,” Katz said. “There’s not much I need to tell them.

 “But we have good people and it’s not just four of us – it’s everybody we put in. We lost two people back there from last year but everyone is working together.”

Katz is also supremely confident in junior goalkeeper Liz Clark.

“I love our goalkeeper. We work so well together back there that when something gets past me, I’m ninety-nine percent sure she’s going to get there,” Katz said.

Down 2-0, the Tigers weren’t done however. During the final 15 minutes of a stint of 240 minutes of soccer played in three days – a win over Huntley and a loss to Naperville Central – a physically weary South team showed the heart of a champion down the stretch of Wednesday’s game.

Callipari subtracted a defender and added a midfielder, and his girls answered the bell.

“We made the adjustment to counter a little bit and take away the midfield play, and make them play a little more direct, and hoped our three in the back could do the job of winning balls and getting us back into transition,” he said.

The Tigers halved the Scouts’ lead at 70 minutes when the Tigers’ Lexi Peterson – banged up but gutting out another 80 minutes Wednesday – crossed a ball from right to left where Caroline Holmes buried it at the far post.

“Whenever we see the clock winding down we rally together, and it gets contagious,” Tigers senior captain Katrina Geannopoulos said. “We all fed off of it. At the end of the game we picked up that fight, and if we had that intensity earlier we might have gotten a goal and been able to relax and play our game.”

Senior Kate Fowee was a sparkplug down the stretch and played with energy throughout the contest for South.

“I think that was Kate’s best perfomance,” Callipari said. “She did a really nice job up top of trying to collect the ball, and organize when others were down that we normally rely on. She filled the role for us today.”

South pressed for an equalizing goal but the Scouts were up to the challenge, despite losing Mick to an injury down the stretch. Edwards’ play was so good that afterwards, she was recognized by the Tigers for it.

Callipari’s team hands out a sportsmanship pin after every game, to an opposing player that best exemplifies quality play on the field, and the Tigers’ captains handed that pin to Edwards at game’s end.

“She’s defensive, she’s offensive, and on the outside she can take it now,” Katz said of Edwards. “ She’s just awesome and she can play some amazing defense.”

Stuckslager appreciated Edwards desire to get involved in the attack from her spot on the outside.

“When you force a team to defend your left back, that’s successful and what we’re trying to do,” he said. “And I thought Dani Loeger had a whale of a game at midfield. She won them in the air and won them on the ground for us.

“I thought we moved the ball well. The girls play a soccer that I enjoy watching. I enjoy watching possession soccer and I tell them that it keeps the other team without the ball. The issue for us is always ‘what do you do in the final third?’.”

Lake Forest has scored 20 goals in 10 games and its only losses have come in 1-0 games to Saint Viator and Carmel.

“We had more opportunities today that we could have finished on, but we just didn’t,” Traut said. “And I think it would have helped our confidence if we had.”

Lake Forest (7-2-1) will take on Elk Grove on Saturday for the right to play in a Pepsi semifinal game. The unbeaten Grens won 2-1 over Wheaton North in their game on Wednesday.

The Tigers fell to 2-4-2 with the loss and will take on Hinsdale South on Saturday in a Pepsi consolation game. All games will be played at Olympic Park in Schaumburg.

“We went to a 4-4-2 today just because we were fatigued and because of the width,” Callipari said. “Lexi getting knocked a little bit certainly didn’t help. She didn’t have a step today, and we lost Nat (Jensen) yesterday in the back, so that changed things a little bit. So we’re fighting all the things that teams are trying to play through, and they weathered.  In the last fifteen minutes they showed heart and spunk to come through.”