Hilltoppers blank Raiders to continue recent improvement

By Dave Owen

 

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An 0-4 start to the season obviously put Glenbard West in a very defensive mood.

The Hilltoppers continued their rapid turnaround Friday with a 1-0 home win over district rival Glenbard South, earning their third straight shutout (2 wins and a 0-0 tie) with solid play up and down the lineup.

“It really is an effort of the whole team,” West coach Maciek Kusmierz said. “At the beginning of the preseason we put an emphasis on the whole team as a unit, and I think we’re still learning.

“The girls are doing a very good job of understanding the concept of playing as a group of 11 players on the field, and though we can see the results there’s still room for improvement. At times we struggle to create offense.”

The offense showed no struggles at the 31:56 mark of the first half when Kaitlin Moore and Alyssa Evans combined on a nice play for all the scoring the Hilltoppers (3-6-2) would need.

Moore broke in on the left wing and sent a cross to the front. A South defender was able to partially deflect the ball, but midfielder Evans raced in to nicely send an 8-yard shot into the left corner of the net.

“It was a great cross from Kaitlin from the left side,” said Evans, a senior co-captain. “I just went in, kind of turned my back and shot it in from the left.”

“Kait and I have played together for the last three years. We really just work together in practice and work together well on the field.”

While not contributing to the scoring column, plenty of other Hilltoppers are working well together to aid the team’s emergence.

Among many other top contributors, the roll call of players aiding goalkeeper Anna Soane’s three straight shutouts is led by defenders Becca Dugan, Alyssa Cantore, McKinzie Powers, Jamie Henkel and Annie O’Brien.

Others include midfielders Alex Levin, Natalie Salo and Maddie Nelson and forwards Abby Ohrnstein, Megan Kostolansky and Zoe Pearson.

The Hilltoppers have allowed just one goal in the last five games (including a 0-0 tie with strong Downers Grove South), and opponents have just 13 regulation goals in 11 games on the year.

“I think we’re just coming together as a team,” Evans said. “We’re working better and practices are helping out a lot. We’re developing better as a stronger team.”

“The harder we work on our formations, the easier it is for our defense,” Kusmierz said. “It starts from the players in front. They work just as hard, and because all of them work so hard our defense has a lot of pressure taken off of them.”

The hard work up front continued to produce chances in the minutes after the goal.

Evans continued as an offensive force, sending a nice cross into the crease in the tenth minute of play that required a diving deflection out of trouble by the Raiders’ goalkeeper. She also had a chip to the left post one minute later that just missed connection with Moore.

The Hilltoppers’ score and other first half chances came with the wind at their backs. But playing into the wind after the break hardly hindered their overall control of play.

Moore had two great scoring chances in the second half, first getting behind two defenders in pursuit of a loose ball with 31:50 left. The goalkeeper was able to reach the ball at the same time, resulting in a deflection wide of the goal.

An even better chance for Moore came with 24:30 to go, when she nicely worked her way into the box for a 15-yard attempt. But South sweeper Nicole Schutte got a foot in to nicely deflect the shot out of bounds.

The Hilltopper pressure intensified with 5:40 to play, when Ohrnstein’s nice corner kick to a crowd in front of net was chipped by Dugan just inches over the crossbar.

Even with the chances at the offensive end, Evans was ready to detour the credit elsewhere.

“I think our defense played a really big part in helping us go against the wind,” Evans said. “They gave us some really nice balls and we got some nice hard shots.”

The Hilltoppers’ back row did solid work clearing the top of the box of any impending scoring threats. Powers made a nice clear of a cross attempt to the front in the 25th minute of the match, as did Henkel in the final minute of the half.

Soane faced two challenges in the second half, the first a save with 15:50 to go. Another Raider threat developed with 2:30 left when Powers deflected a South shot just wide of the left post.

The ensuing corner kick produced a header wide right of the net, and the Hilltoppers answered by going on the offensive – a Dugan throw-in led to a Moore sprint in on right wing and a shot just over the net.

“We’ve really talked about the concept of basically playing against all 11 players instead of playing one or two, and they’re slowly grasping the concept of it,” Kusmierz said. “We’ve been able to play well because everybody has worked so hard at it.

“Defensively we did well, but the quality of play – we still have to improve on that. Especially against the wind we didn’t connect our passes well and didn’t execute the game plan as well as we wanted to. We still want to keep working on our offense.”

The Hilltoppers were coming off their best offensive game of the year, a 7-0 win at Proviso West on Tuesday in which Moore scored two goals and Katie Burrello, Levin, Kostolansky, Pearson and Ilham Hussaini had one each.

Glenbard West heads down the stretch of the season having found its stride, with hopes to keep moving forward.

“I think we’re going to keep up the momentum,” Evans said. “We’re really growing strong as a team and developing.”