Girls soccer: WW South blanks rival to stay unbeaten
Lily Petrie didn’t think she scored.
The senior’s goal late in the first half proved to be all the scoring Wheaton Warrenville South needed as it remained unbeaten while procuring the traveling trophy with a 2-0 DuKane Conference victory on Thursday at Wheaton North.
“I’m going to be honest,” Petrie said. “I didn’t think it went in. That’s why I turned around. I don’t know. I just turned and shot.”
Petrie’s goal arrived with 6:44 remaining in the opening half with the senior finishing a build up from the back.
“The keeper got fingers on it but parried it off the post,” Tigers coach Guy Callipari said. “And I’m not sure how it went behind her, but the wind was coming across, but it did carom in and fall in and as anticlimactic as it was, it was a very important goal at the end of the day.”
Wheaton North (5-5-1, 1-2) hung with its rival. The Falcons appeared on the verge of equalizing early in the second half on a few occasions. Senior Ellie Schomig narrowly caught up with a corner kick from Talia Kaempf in the 46th minute.
“It felt like we were going to get something going but their goalie (Marilyn Dixon) is tough and I would say their back line was able to stop us,” Kaempf said. “We’ve talked about this game all year. A team could play well one night and we could play bad and vice versa. It just depends on the day, but it was a fun game. It’s special to have a rivalry like this.”
Wheaton Warrenville South (9-0-2, 3-0-1) went up two when sophomore Kelsey Clousing got taken down with 31:53 remaining.
Senior Brooke Ittersagen converted the ensuing PK and the Tigers had insurance.
“I feel like since we’re undefeated there is pressure, but I think we feed off that pressure,” Ittersagen said. “Teams know we’re good now we have to keep grinding and keep winning. This is a special group of girls. We’ve all grown up together.”
Ittersagen misfired left on another PK with 10:33 left, but it didn’t matter, especially with Dixon in charge in net.
“We didn’t give them a lot of opportunities,” she said. “They only had two good opportunities really off of dead balls, otherwise our defense really locked down. We really didn’t let Talia (Kaempf) cut to the middle and go to her left. We forced her to her right. I think our defense did a really good job.”
The Tigers were playing without Ashlyn Adams who is nursing a hamstring injury. The Falcons are without Jane Rogers this season with an injury while Callipari said the Tigers expect to have Adams back in about a week.