Hawks get some goals in preparation for Batavia

By Gary Larsen

Bartlett loosened up its collective scoring leg on Tuesday, and the Hawks hope to keep that leg swinging in a Class 3A regional opener against Batavia next week.

Bartlett (15-7) won 7-1 over visiting Elgin in a game that saw Sam Fairbanks and Christina Collazo score two goals each. Sam Barone, Lyndsay Bruzzini, and Christina Fairbanks also added goals.

 “I think we had good ball movement today, good possession, and strung some passes together,” Bartlett coach Heather Thomas said. “We worked on some things that need to be improved on for Batavia.”

“We got some good shots on goal, again, both quality and quantity. Hopefully we can keep that going.”

Three days after the Hawks fired plenty of quality shots on net but only scored once in a 1-0 win over Glenbard North, a 7-goal outpouring was just what the doctor ordered in Bartlett.

Barone broke the ice in the game’s 11th minute on a feed from Nicole Gobbo. Gobbo was prominent throughout the contest, staying consistently busy in the attack and firing 9 shots on net, but unfortunately coming up empty.

“She was so mad,” Sam Fairbanks said of Gobbo. “But she kept trying.”

Sam Fairbanks scored her first goal in the 19th minute, a 22-yard boot that fell under the crossbar that gave Bartlett a 2-0 lead, on a feed from younger sister Christina.

The senior Fairbanks scored again in the 28th minute, driving a ball left-footed inside the far post from 18 yards out, and Bartlett was off and running.

“I think a lot of times we get frustrated if we can’t put them away,” Fairbanks said. “We just have to keep working at it, and it will come. I think we passed better today and tried making runs. It was a good day.”

Field player Collazo started in net for Bartlett and another field player in Rachel Irwin played goal for the second half. Bartlett’s chief goalkeeping core of Erin Zaideman and Natalia Grodzki are slightly banged up, and Thomas rested them both on Tuesday.

“I said ‘who wants to play?’” Thomas said. “(Assistant coach Sarah) Marks and I talked in the past about who would be our backup-backup keeper, so we had talked about putting (Collazo) in net. She did fine and Rachel did fine too, for that matter.”

The Hawks went up 7-0 with 20 minutes left in regulation, cutting the remaining time in half per IHSA rules. Elgin scored on a counterattack late in the contest.

“Sam Fairbanks had a couple great shots and Gobbo played well,” Thomas said. “She didn’t get a goal but she certainly had some great shots. And Lisa Palmer played well in the back. Overall it was a good effort.”

The Hawks lost 3-0 to Batavia on April 10, and will square off with the Bulldogs on Wednesday in a regional opener at Hoffman Estates. Bartlett is the No. 8 seed of the Schaumburg sectional and Batavia is seeded 9th.

“I think we’re a little nervous because we know after Batavia we’d have (top-seeded) St. Charles North,” Fairbanks said.

“But we’re going to work our butts off and focus on what we need to work on. Overall, I think we just need to pass better to each other. A lot of us have good ball skills but we don’t string enough passes together.”

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