Naperville North Boots Kits In Tourney Opener

Evanston’s path to a third straight tournament championship game appearance was different then than it is now.

Now? The Wildkits are going to require some help from the others in the field at the 7th annual Lou Malnati’s Deep Dish Classic tournament after suffering their first soccer loss of the season by a 2-0 margin to Naperville North Saturday at Lazier Field.

In a matchup of last year’s two finalists, Naperville North (4-1-2) scored twice in the first half of the round-robin Group 2 play as Emily Buescher tallied off a corner kick in the 35th minute and Lily Radek added an insurance tally with just 11 seconds remaining in the first half.

Evanston, now 4-1-2, never got untracked and never connected on more than two passes in a row on offense.

Group games on the road Monday at Lyons and Wednesday at Lake Forest are opportunities for the Kits to get back on track against high level competition. But the change in tourney format this year likely will cost them a chance to play in the championship game next Saturday at New Trier.

In the past, group winners from three different groups and one at-large team advanced to the semis, and then to the finals. But both Grayslake Central and Wheaton St. Francis dropped out of the tournament, reducing the field to 10 teams and creating a different path to the finals.

Now only the overall winners from Evanston’s 4-team group and the 6-team group playing at New Trier will advance.

The defending tourney champs are still searching for combinations that can click against any foe, and ETHS head coach Stacy Salgado admitted Saturday that the starting lineups going forward may depend more on actual matchups against certain opponents than on a desire to solidify a starting unit with the same 11 players lining up in the same spots for each game.

“Naperville North is a good, physical team and we just had a couple of letdowns on defense today,” Salgado said. “We played tough defense against them --- and then we let one in on that corner that we should have been able to stop.

“We won it last year and now it will be challenging to try to do it again. We’ll see how things shake out. We’ll still get to play three good and competitive games and that will be good for us, so we can see what we need to work on.”

Defensive standouts for the Wildkits Saturday were junior Dami Adeniyi and sophomore Maizlyn Kelly, who along with goalie Kanako Wagner (11 saves) kept the visiting Huskies off the scoreboard until late in the first half.

Then Buescher re-directed a corner feed from Abby Penn past Wagner, and in the final seconds of the half Radek dribbled through a crowd of three Evanston defenders and booted home the insurance goal.

The losers only put a total of six shots on goal, all of them handled easily by North’s outstanding keeper, Olivia Ochsner. Evanston’s best chance for a score was a blast by Alexandra Merriam that glanced off the crossbar in the 60th minute.

Merriam, who missed two games last week while competing in a tournament for the Honduran Under-17 national team, returned to the starting lineup this week and should give Evanston a boost on offense. Salgado experimented with Merriam in the midfield in a Thursday win over Highland Park, instead of at forward, in an effort to get her more touches.

The Kits also called up sophomore forward Brinna Fasoranti from the junior varsity squad Saturday. Fasoranti was injured just prior to halftime by a tackle from behind --- as part of four yellow cards for infractions like that by the Huskies --- and didn’t return in the second half.

“We didn’t connect well. We were a little off today,” Salgado said. “We only got a couple of chances today, and we need to find more ways to score. We’re still moving things around and that might take us all season, I don’t know. There will be a different feel for some of them because they might know where they’re going to play, depending on the matchups.

“We brought Brinna up for the tournament because she was getting a lot of goals for her (JV) team. She has the speed that can put pressure on other teams. And we’re trying Alex (Merriam) in the midfield because we want her to get the ball as much as she can.”