Spartans' 2nd half carries them to SCC win over Montini

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By Gary Larsen

Sometimes you just have to relax and play the game.

A St. Francis attack that returned almost everyone from a team that scored 67 goals in 25 games last year heeded that advice from coach Jim Winslow, after 40 minutes of scoreless soccer on Tuesday against Montini.

“Shoot,” Winslow said. “We really didn’t shoot that much in the first half. At halftime I asked the five kids that played up there and four of them raised their hands and admitted they had shots they didn’t take.”

That changed in the second half as the Spartans took the shots they saw and finished on three of them on the way to a 3-0 win in Lombard. Andi Matichak struck twice and Sydney Fox scored once during a suffocating 20 minutes of attacking soccer from the Spartans to start the second half.

“We had to keep our composure and keep the ball moving forward so that we could get those better opportunities to score,” Fox said. “We haven’t started off as strong with our scoring this year. We’re doing great getting the ball up. We just have to work on finishing.”

The Spartans scored 67 goals in 25 games last year with most of the same attacking players. St. Francis went into Tuesday’s game having scored 10 goals in 10 games.

“I think sometimes we’re pressing too much to score,” Winslow said. “They just have to play and take shots. The more you try and pinpoint things too much, the more things tend to go askew.”

St. Francis goalkeeper Jenna Ditusa was good and bored for the first 30 minutes of the second half, as she watched her team take control in the attacking third and put three goals on the board.

The sophomore saw the game’s great intangible at play after halftime.

“I think we just picked up our intensity. Our work ethic was much better in the second half,” Ditusa said. “I thought we picked it up a lot in the second half.”

Montini played with urgency and fought for every ball in a spirited first half, but Ditusa and a back line featuring Dana Dubois, Anna Vonderhaar, and Meg Wagner handled all the Broncos had to offer.

Matichak battled through illness and got after it in the second half. The junior scored on a Fox feed at the near post at 45 minutes. Fox earned her first goal of the season when she took a ball up the end line on the left side, cut back and buried a shot inside the near post for a 2-0 lead.

Another factor in the Spartans’ second-half surge was one that Winslow has been preaching. “Creating width,” he said. “The field tends to get congested and narrow so we want to keep recreating width. One kid goes in and another goes out (wide). Taylor Bucaro is starting to see that more and more. She did that well against Glenbard North (a 2-1 win) but we weren’t able to capitalize on it.”

Kaity Bucaro, Sarah Rahman, Anna Vonderhaar, and Katie Ramsey all helped the Spartans keep the pressure on in the final third. Matichak scored her second goal when she dribbled up the right edge of the penalty area and pulled the trigger. The junior had a potential hat-trick on her foot a short time later but her left-footed shot flew just high.

“I’ve seen drastic improvement in our ability to knock the ball around since the start of the year,” Winslow said. “If we can play like we did in the second half today, the other team doesn’t get many chances and you take them out of what they like to do.

“If you can play like this against good teams for 20 minutes here or 20 minutes there, you’ll created those four or five quality opportunities you need to win.”

Ditusa and her defense held off some late pressure from Montini, with Ditusa making two saves and elevating to snare a Broncos’ corner kick as the Spartans posted their fifth shutout of the season.

“I think we’re doing great as far as defense goes. We haven’t let a lot of goals in so far,” Ditusa said. “We’re improving. We’ve developed a good relationship as a team, we’re really close, and it just makes it that much easier to play together.”