Unbeaten North Stars post 3rd shutout in 4 games vs. Batavia

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By Darryl Mellema

Every soccer field has its own unique characteristics, which is a byproduct of the game’s rules, which allow pitches to be anywhere from 50 to 100 yards wide and anywhere from 100 to 120 yards long – so long as they’re longer than they are wide.

So there are variations, though most international fields are around 120 by 75. Most high school fields, constrained by their surrounding running tracks, are 120 by 65. Barrington has a 75-yard wide field, as does Waubonsie Valley, which has its field outside the football stadium complex.

And then there is Batavia’s field, with its long jump pits inside the running track, which squeezes to soccer sidelines to an incredibly narrow 54 yards, though it is 120 yards long.

St. Charles North, whose own field angles upward at its sidelines in another weird bit of engineering, battled Batavia on that postage stamp-sized field on Tuesday and emerged with a 2-0 Upstate Eight Conference River victory.

“We found out early when we took some long throws and things and we were not in position,” St. Charles North senior Sammy Gage said. “But as the game went on, we adjusted. Alex (Gage) shortened up her corners so that they landed shorter than where they normally would. KK Barr, we still had her throw as far as she could, but we backed our line up. So we adjusted well.”

Those field dimensions did force some adjustments for the North Stars (4-0, 2-0) who adapted quickly on a chilly early April evening.

“We were talking before the game about getting our outside midfielders wide and turning their hips so they were facing the goal so the ball wasn’t going to go out of bounds,” St. Charles North coach Ruth Vostal said. “And then we wanted to have our forwards stretching, trying to get the field a little bigger. But I was happy with the way we did that.”

The thing is, in recent years, Batavia has worked to improve the quality of the field on which its teams play. So although the field was considerably narrower, the surface on which the teams played was excellent, and that suited the North Stars just fine.

“We liked it,” Gage said. “We like to run forward and so if it was a shorter field, I think that would have affected us more.”

Gage scored both goals, taking advantage of some lax Batavia play on each occasion. The first came 20 minutes into the first half when Lauren Koehl latched onto a Batavia goal kick. Koehl sent the ball directly forward to Gage, who ran in and scored.

Gage’s second came five minutes into the second half when she got to the ball before Batavia’s advancing goalkeeper, who was trying to cut off a leading pass and stop the breakaway by coming out of her penalty area. Gage reached the ball first, dribbled toward the penalty area alone and shot from the left to the right post.

“It’s just a matter of anticipating where the ball’s going to be,” Gage said. “Lauren Koehl, that ball on my first goal – we’ve done that a thousand times in practice. She hits it forward and I run onto it. Or Alex (Gage) does the same thing.”

Those opportunistic goals were just what St. Charles North needed in order to break down a stout Batavia squad.

“She’s one of the most creative players I’ve coached,” Vostal said of Gage. “She’s got that finesse and that calm composure in the offensive third where she can find the net. She can find that perfect through ball. She’s done that the past couple of years in the midfield. But now that she’s up front, I think she’s going to be able to score more goals.”

Batavia (2-3-1, 0-1) had one shot on goal in the contest. St. Charles North’s midfield and defense dominated the match, siphoning the Bulldogs attacks before they reached goalkeeper Kendall Karr and then quickly returning the ball forward.

In that attacking area, the North Stars took advantage of the quality of the grass to play neat passing patterns to try to create chances.

“We’ve been working really hard on possession, whether it’s in our defensive half or offensive half,” Vostal said. “We run a drill where they can see pattern after pattern. It’s not necessarily running plays but running patterns where people should be.”

And that practice work will continue, certainly for the time being at least.

“I still don’t think we’re there yet,” Vostal said. “I think the patterns we’re running, we’re doing four or five and they’re trying to get more people involved on the outsides. One thing I would like to see is the overlaps out of the back, because we have players who can give us that possibility. On this narrow of a field, it’s difficult to get that going because there’s nowhere for them to go.”

Gage also felt the North Stars still have better games in them, even though they’ve played undefeated soccer so far in 2011.

“We do,” Gage said. “I have a lot of faith in this team. Maybe the first half wasn’t maybe our best 40 minutes of glory. But our second half, the tenacity, the drive and “the want” and everything in this team was impressive.”

While some teams have played a considerable number of matches so far this season, Tuesday’s was the fourth of the year for St. Charles North. Given the losses to graduation and positional shifts the team has undergone, the North Stars are still setting into the season. This weekend, they travel to Wisconsin for a pair of matches that should increase their knowledge of how they are playing as well test them considerably.

“I think we’re working into the rotation between our players and the formation that we want,” Vostal said. “I was happy with the second half. I thought in the second half, we played with a little more intensity and a little more fight than we did in the first half.”

Vostal said Amanda Soukup was one of the keys to that second half surge.

“She came in off the bench,” Vostal said. “She hasn’t had a ton of minutes. She came into the midfield and wasn’t one who had a goal or an assist or anything like that. But at halftime, I wasn’t happy with our intensity. I said we were getting beat to the ball and there were all these little things that we needed to do. (Soukup) went in and she was winning tackles and doing things and got that fire going.”

One of the players who impressed with her forward movement was freshman Sophie Pohl. Her touches were solid and her speed moving forward was deceptive, mainly because Pohl is 6 feet tall and her strides are longer than shorter players.

“She’s going to be, I think, a really, really great player,” Vostal said. “When we get her vision of the field and get her figuring out where the runs are on the field so she can get her timing down, I think she will do very well. She’s working really hard, so I don’t think that’s going to take a long time. But it will take a little while for her to develop that.”

Pohl said her hope had been to make the North Stars varsity squad as a freshman and she has enjoyed her time on the varsity to this point.

“I’m having a blast,” Pohl said. “I am so excited to work with North. It was my goal to be on varsity and it’s been great so far.”

Although St. Charles North graduated a number of players in 2010, they still returned a good number of players with varsity experience. So fitting into the lineup this year means working with some experienced players, and Pohl said that process is going very well.

“I have to catch up to these girls because they have played soccer with each other for so long,” Pohl said. “I am just working hard to get up to their level because they’re a great team.”