By Bobby Narang
One year later, the Plainfield North High School girls soccer team got some revenge.
For the third straight season, Plainfield North and Geneva played in the Plainfield Classic championship game Saturday (April 13) afternoon.
The two teams had split the title game battles, with Geneva winning last season through penalty kicks.
“We talked about to remember last year and we had to take care of the game in the first 80 minutes,” Plainfield North coach Katie Monterosso said. “Geneva is a great team. We won two years ago, and that was also a very tight game where we scored the winning goal late.”
On a sunny and hot late afternoon, the Plainfield North Tigers scored three goals in the last 10 minutes to pull out a 3-0 triumph over the Vikings in the Plainfield Classic title game in Plainfield.
Plainfield North sophomore forward Katelyn Haiser was the hero of the game, ending the scoreless drought with consecutive goals in a two-plus minute run which was followed up by a goal from freshman Illyanna Bariball.
Geneva coach Megan Owens said her team battled strong against a highly-talented Tigers’ team, but needed to play a full game.
“We allowed three goals in the last 10 minutes, so it’s mental,” Owens said. “We dominated long stretches of the game. We just checked in the end. That’s high school soccer. You have to put a complete game together for the full 80 minutes. We have the talent. We have to create and finish shots and stay mentally in the game. We fought really hard for the first 70 minutes. It shouldn’t happen, but we will learn from it and move on. Plainfield North is a really solid program. We controlled a lot of the game, but just imploded in the last 10 minutes.
Geneva Caroline Madden senior midfielder said the Vikings have to be more focused, especially playing teams such as the Tigers who are capable of stringing together goals in rapid fashion.
“They had some good shots at the end,” Madden said. “At the end, we had to take some chances and put some people offensively. That makes it harder to defend with less numbers. We definitely wanted to take advantage of the wind in the first half, which we didn’t do, so we knew it would be more pressure on us in the second half to keep our mistakes from happening in the back. We knew that the second half would be harder. We played hard today and put in good effort. There’s a lot to learn from today.”
Haiser said she was happy to be playing at full strength after dealing with an injured right knee for most of the season.
“That felt really good to get the first one because I had a lot of chances and I was getting double-teamed and it was frustrating in the first half with the wind,” Haiser said of her first goal. The girl gave me space and I turned (on the second goal). That goal was pretty satisfying. This win really felt good because of last year. We knew we had to win this.”
Monterosso said this season’s team is completely different from last season’s 23-2-2 squad.
“This year is a completely different year,” she said. “We graduated 15 seniors last year, so we’re really trying to see the mixes and figure things out. Some girls play well in one position one day, then we might switch it up and see some different things. It’s nice because you can throw people in different positions and you get completely different looks. We look completely different sometimes from even the first 15 minutes or the last 15 minutes, depending on who is clicking.”
•In other tourney action, Glenbard East beat Morton, 3-0, in the first game Saturday afternoon. Glenbard East coach Athena Toliopoulos she was happy for her team to win their first game of the season.
“We finally found the back of the net on two beautiful games,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for a few games. This is probably our first game where all 11 players played for the win. It can get frustrating when you can’t find the back of the goal sometimes, but they stuck through it. They are a great bunch of kids. They have the skills. We got our first goal off a header this season. It was really nice to see them score. We have a young team this year.
“We have a very intense two weeks ahead of us. I’ve got a great group of seniors leading the charge. If we continue playing the way we played today, we definitely have a chance to win the (Upstate Eight) Conference. Our next goal is to win a regional. The kids are playing physical. The way we played today is the way I expect us to play the rest of the season.”