Wildcats dominate in getting back on the winning track

CLICK HERE FOR GAME PHOTOS

By Gary Larsen

The opening minute didn’t bode well for Larkin against host West Chicago on Friday.

West Chicago’s Meagan Radloff ran onto a lead pass from teammate Mary Rojas, turned the corner up the left side and went far post to put the Wildcats up 1-0, just 25 seconds into the contest.

Playing straight into the face of a wicked wind, West Chicago was off and running in an eventual 7-0 win that upped its record to 4-5 on the year.

Radloff ended the day with a hat-trick and 2 assists, and Mary Rojas found her twice to put the Wildcats up 2-0 by the game’s 6th minute.

Players with the skill over the ball that Rojas has can sometimes try to do too much, but the Wildcats’ center midfielder steered the ship well on Friday. Playing without midfield running mate Bianca Navejas for the day, the junior needed to settle the midfield.

“Mary did a good job today,” West Chicago coach Cesar Gomez said. “I keep challenging her because she’s challengeable. Those (assists) were beautiful. We’re going to see people playing a flat-four, and into the wind I thought that was perfect.”

“I think they were pretty lucky,” Rojas said of her two forward feeds to Radloff. “I saw Meagan open but the wind is so bad I thought the ball would just fly back. I hit it extra hard so I could get it to her.”

Radloff slid a ball to the right side in the 27th minute that freshman Katie Becker hammered home from 16 yards out, giving West Chicago a 3-0 halftime lead.

And with the prospect of having the wind at its back in the second half, West Chicago was in a good place.

“We’re still fine-tuning. They’re still in the process of getting to where we want them to be,” Gomez said. “But it was good to see us score early against the wind like that.”

Becker added another goal in the second half. “Katie’s going to be okay once she understands the whole thing,” Gomez said. “As freshmen they sometimes over-think things when they need to just play.”

In the 51st minute, junior Sarah Opel located a Radloff corner kick near the far post and buried it to make it 4-0, and Radloff completed her day statistically by powering a ball to the back netting from 25 yards out.

“And she’s playing on two rolled ankles,” Gomez said of his junior striker. “Meagan always plays well.”

Jessica Quinn made it 6-0 with a shot from 12 yards out in the 55th minute, before Becker finished the day’s scoring in the 78th minute, breaking in on the left side and tucking a ball inside the near post.

“We have some freshmen who are getting a view of varsity play, and I think we can go far,” Rojas said. “We’re working on the attacking part, and finishing. The way we have to play is to pass the ball around. Possession is our game.”

Junior defender Jenny Amaro helped the Wildcats to their second shutout of the year, along with Quinn, junior Rachel Thomas, and senior Stephanie Salinas.

“I started at stopper but me and Stephanie (Salinas), our sweeper, have been switching off,” Amaro said. “It’s my first year with this defense and so far I like it. We communicate very well with each other.”

“I think we did pretty well today. We possessed most of the time but we still need to work on it. Our main goal is to keep working at possessing it. Even in our losses we were able to possess, but weren’t able to get through.”