Gators come alive in second half to roll past Dundee-Crown

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By Darryl Mellema

As Crystal Lake South's girls soccer team left its halftime huddle at rainy Dundee-Crown on Saturday, Gators coach Brian Allen exhorted them to play as hard as possible in the opening five minutes.

The Gators clearly thought Allen was being a little conservative in his projections, since they went out and played hard for the 35 minutes that were played in an 8-1 victory in their Fox Valley Conference Valley Division opener.

The amazing part of the scoreline was that at the time of Allen's halftime chat with his team, the Gators only owned a 1-0 lead.

"We knew what they were capable of at halftime," South senior Karley Mecko said. "We just decided to turn it around and use our abilities."

Mecko scored three goals while junior Kali Loescher added four to key the victory. Katie Burton scored the Gators' other goal.

It wasn't that South had played poorly in the first half since it had, in fact, played quite well. But the Gators still didn't score until Mecko converted 12 minutes before halftime.

"We had our best warmup of the season and we had our best practice (Friday)," Mecko said.

"We wanted to start over with our first conference game. We felt we were 0-0 and wanted to start our conference season with a win."

The Gators (3-3, 1-0) have scored in bunches in the matches in which they have won. All 18 of the team's goals have come in their victories.

"We've played some pretty tough teams in our nonconference season," Mecko said. "We wanted to replace our confidence.

"I think we lost our confidence a little after not winning those games. This game helped us do that."

Mecko said her hat trick performance was her biggest one-game haul of her South career and took her season total to four for the season.

Loescher also started Saturday with one goal to her credit but now has jumped to five for the 2010 campaign.

"We just had to push it together after halftime," Loescher said. "I think one goal kicks us into gear and we didn't want to stop. Once we get a goal, we don't stop. We keep pushing."

The Gators got their goal parade started in the sixth minute of the second half when Emma Dalzell cut back the ball from the end line for Mecko to score.

Three minutes later, Loescher got free of the Dundee-Crown defense and scored a fine solo goal.

Less than a half-minute later, Loescher put the Gators ahead 4-0 and two minutes after that, Mecko headed in a corner kick to complete her hat trick.

Loescher converted a Mackenzie Taldone cross and the score was suddenly 6-0 and there were still 26 minutes to play.

"Our forwards are always dangerous," Allen said. "But we were able to control through the middle. We were able to win every 50-50 ball and that helped."

Mecko turned into the provider for the Gators' seventh goal when she crossed for Burton to head home.

At that point, the remaining 10 minutes were halved, and only a further five minutes were played.

"Something happened where they exploded there in the second half." Allen said. "I think it started with the midfield and filtered in through everyone else.

"It was good to see the ball hit the back of the net against a good keeper and an organized defense."

In that time, there were two more goals. First, Dundee-Crown (3-3-2, 1-1) ended the shutout when Stephanie Letheby scored and Loescher collected the final goal with 2:53 to play.

The Gators return to action on Tuesday when they host Lisle in a 4:30 pm match in the Pepsi Showdown.