Maine South hands Huskies worst loss of season

By Dan Santaromita

Oak Park-River Forest turned in a performance on Saturday afternoon in Park Ridge that it would like to forget.

Maine South forward Jenna Shemky scored two goals and had an assist, all in the first half, to lead the Hawks to a 5-0 romp over OPRF.

The Huskies (9-7-1) never had much of a rhythm and were below their usual standards in almost every facet of the game.

"We just didn't come to play today," OPRF coach Paul Wright said. "We had a phenomenal game against Lyons Township last game, it was 1-0 (a loss) and we out shot them and moved the ball around great.

"We came out here and maybe it was the cold or wind or what, I don't know. We talked at halftime; you can't choose what games you want to come to play to."

Meanwhile, Shemky showed why she has twice been named as an All-State forward for Maine South (14-4-3), which is unbeaten in its last 11 matches.

She netted one goal in the tenth minute, assisted Anna Wolf in the 25th minute and scored on a breakaway over Huskies' goalie Katie Oldach (13 saves) in the 31st minute.

"Jenna Shemky put on a great show for everyone," Wright said.

The Huskies' usually solid defense was beaten time and again by an efficient Hawks' offense, for which OPRF didn't have an answer.

"We tried a couple different looks, but nothing was really working and so we just gave some kids some rest," Wright said.

"Before this game we had given up 11 goals all season, we gave up 5 today. We thought we were peaking against Lyons Township, but we really took a step back. We'll just have to reevaluate some things."

Down three at half, the Huskies actually had the run of play for the first ten to fifteen minutes of the second half.

Juniors Emily Gullo and Jessica Luttrell worked hard to keep possession for the Huskies.

Unfortunately for them, Elyssa Kulas headed in a corner in the 57th minute to make it 4-0 and the Huskies lost their momentum. Monica Rosenberger added the fifth goal.

The 5-0 score was Oak Park's worst loss of the season. It hadn't been beaten by more than two goals previously this year.

Despite surrendering five goals, Oldach played well in net.

"It's just simple mistakes that we've made throughout," a frustrated Wright said. "We're not going to the ball, not making the easy pass, not following the runs and you know we got punished for it.

"We got Fenwick coming up next week which is a huge game, but it's just disappointing because you should want to come out and compete every day and we just didn't want to come out here and compete today."

Before hosting Fenwick on Friday, the Huskies will play at Glenbard West to close out West Suburban Silver play Tuesday.

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