Knights fall to MSL East leader Buffalo Grove
By Eric Van Dril

Buffalo Grove spent its Sunday, a day typically used for rest and recuperation, battling Plainfield North in an overtime match which figures to be one of its most physically and mentally exhausting contests of the season.

One day later, the Bison faced an unenviable task: try to stay unbeaten against a fast, physical and talented Prospect team while dealing with fatigue. Before the game, sophomore Jessica Kovach and her teammates tried to tap into the lingering excitement from winning the Pepsi Showdown at Toyota Park to propel them past Prospect.

Buffalo Grove's strategy worked. Kovach scored on a free kick just three minutes and 54 seconds into the game, and the Bison held the Lady Knights without a shot in the first half. Buffalo Grove earned a 2-0 victory over Prospect on Monday night, despite fighting through fatigue in the second half and dodging three golden opportunities generated by the Lady Knights.

“I think we still have a lot of energy flowing through us,” Kovach said. “We were all coming off the (Pepsi Showdown) win and we just wanted to keep going. We all said, 'If we can win that, we can win this. We can do it.' It's a mental thing sort of, because we're all so tired. We were all like, 'Just keep pushing and pushing. We can make it through.' It turns out that, after encouraging each other and helping each other out, that we could push through the game and finish it off.”

Kovach opened the game's scoring with her first goal on a free kick this season. The sophomore, who's capable of accurately striking free kicks with both feet, said she visualized testing Prospect senior goalkeeper Eileen McTigue with a left-footed shot.

Kovach lined up her free kick from the right flank and struck a perfectly-placed shot from about 30 yards away. The ball hung in the air for a moment, and then sailed over McTigue's outstretched arm and underneath the cross bar.

“I felt good warming up,” Kovach said. “I practice with both my left and my right, and I squared up and I saw it with my left. I saw it in the corner and I was like, 'I'm going to do it. I'm going to go for it.' I just decided I was going to try it, and it turns out it worked out.”

It worked with 36:06 remaining in the first half, and it nearly worked a minute and a half later. Kovach lined up another free kick from approximately the same distance – this time she was in the middle of the field and 33 yards away – but her strike bounced off the cross bar and out of play.

The Bison (16-0-1, 6-0 MSL) controlled possession throughout the first half after Kovach scored the contest's first goal. Colleen Zickert, Kovach, Kim Herzog and Skylar Groth were all effective in holding possession and combined nicely with forwards Sara Busse, Allie Ingham and Colleen Zickert to create offensive chances.

Buffalo Grove's midfield dominated the first half of the game, with senior defensive midfielder Kelly VandeMerkt providing an effective backbone to help thwart Prospect's counterattacks before they could reach dangerous areas of the field.

The Lady Knights (9-2-2, 4-2-1 MSL) seemed frustrated by the time the halftime horn sounded. They entered intermission without registering a single shot on goal, while Buffalo Grove had 11 shots on goal in the game's first 40 minutes.

During halftime, Prospect coach Tom Froats altered his lineup. He added another player to the midfield, keeping three defenders – sophomore Rosie Pettenuzzo, junior Elena Cukurs and junior Jenny Novak – on the team's back line. Doing so accomplished his primary goal, which was to better control midfield in order to generate more offense.

“We talked about controlling in the midfield a little bit more, and I think we put numbers in midfield and kind of took away the time and space they had in the first half to play with the ball in the middle third,” Froats said. “As a result, we were able to possess a little more in the second half. One thing with Buffalo Grove, if you let them possess, they're going to eat you alive. That's what they did in the first half. I think we were fortunate to be 1-0 at half, for letting them have so much of the possession.”

In addition to Froats' tactical change, Prospect's players changed their mindset during halftime.

“We came in in the first half thinking, 'Oh, we're going to lose. We're not going to do so well,'” Prospect freshman Martina Kowalczuk said. “Then, after talking about it, (we went into the) second half thinking, 'Well, we can go to up to their level and we can beat them.' We just couldn't put it in the back of the net, but I think we played up to their level.”

The Lady Knights began controlling the game almost immediately in the second half. They took it to the Bison until Buffalo Grove junior forward Kelli Zickert put the game away with a goal off of a free kick – Kovach again initiated the play – with about seven minutes remaining in the contest.

Kowalczuk was the offensive catalyst during that stretch. The speedy forward was able to win several one-on-one match-ups by absorbing contact and using her speed to jet past the left side of Buffalo Grove's defense. Both of her shots – one was taken with 34:43 remaining in the game, the other with 27:17 remaining – were taken from about 18 yards away after she sprinted down the field and won a one-on-one matchup.

While Kowalczuk twice beat Buffalo Grove goalkeeper Sarah O'Connor to the far post, both of her attempts rolled just inches wide. The second, which was created on a perfect through ball by junior midfielder Emily Novak, seemed like it was destined for the goal's side netting. But it turned over and went wide at the last second.

“I thought it was going in, but I don't know what happened,” said Kowalczuk, of her second shot. “At the last second it turned.”

Kowalczuk was also able to generate Prospect's best opportunity of the contest, when she beat her defender and crossed the ball to a wide-open Sarah LaCost about three minutes into the second half. LaCost, a senior forward, was one-on-one with O'Connor about seven yards away, but her shot sailed over the cross bar.

Coming tantalizingly close to converting quality opportunities was a theme in the second half for the Lady Knights.

“In the second half, there were (three) great chances we created,” Froats said. “We came away with none of them, and they had an opportunity and they finished. That was frustrating for us, as a side, to see that in the second half.”

Froats added: “I thought we stood toe-to-toe with them. We had two, three great chances that we didn't take advantage of. And that's all you're going to get against a team like Buffalo Grove or the elite clubs in the area. If you can't finish them, then it's going to make it difficult to keep them off the board.”

Although they came out on the losing end, the Lady Knights walked away from the match feeling encouraged that they were able to play so well in the second half against a team – albeit one who played 180 minutes of soccer in less than 36 hours – which is undefeated.

“I think that if we come across a team like Buffalo Grove any time soon, I think we can take them,” Kowalczuk said. “Looking back on this game, I think we've just got to put the shots in the back of the net.”

For Buffalo Grove, beating a quality Prospect team made it the overwhelming favorite to win the MSL East. The Bison also showed the team's ability to fight through fatigue, which was a constant during their run to the Pepsi Showdown title.

“It seemed like they were much more aggressive and they came out with a lot more energy, and we were almost declining in energy because we were getting (more and more) tired as the game went on,” Kovach said. “I think it was a big step for us, to try to combat all their energy and try to force out all the energy that we had. They were coming at us really hard, and I think that we weren't really expecting that. Even if we were, we weren't on our toes enough. It was really hard to pull out everything we had at the end.”