Trojans Rally for Shootout Win Over WWS

Downers Grove North senior goalie Matt Paprocki was just hoping for a chance to redeem himself.

Paprocki let in a goal in the first half of Thursday night's Pepsi Challenge game at Wheaton Warrenville South that he knew he should have saved. That put the Trojans in a two-goal hole.

But DGN rallied to force a shootout, tied 2-2, and Paprocki was center stage. The first four Trojans to shoot all scored on Tigers goalie Joshua Dix, but Paprocki came up with two huge saves to push the Trojans' winning streak to seven matches.

"I just tried to pick my teammates up after the mistake I made early on," Paprocki said. "They picked me by scoring those two goals. It just shows our character as a team. We do not want to lose."

In the first half, Downers North (7-0-1) did not resemble the team that won the past six matches by at least two goals. Daniel Burns and Nate Fuster put the Tigers (3-3-1) up 2-0 before the half.

The message from DGN coach Brian Gervase at the half was simple.

"The first thing I told them at halftime was that this is right where we want to be," Gervase said. "Nobody has tested us this season. This is the first team that really put us under the gun. We wanted to know, in that kind of circumstance, who we are. If they're going to be state champs like they think they can be, this is where we have to be. It was great to see tem respond like that."

The Trojans were forced to push up to score goals, and they dominated on the offensive end as a result of it. They scored twice, put three other shots on goal and had a whopping nine shots that either went high or wide as they peppered Dix the entire 40 minutes.

Downers North got back into the game at the 33:54 mark when Jakob Mousel punched in a ball that was bouncing around in the box to slice the lead to 2-1. Then with 26:01 left, Mousel slid into the box and finished a Reid Melton feed to suddenly tie the game.

"The first half, we played a little bit more defensive," Mousel said. "We didn't have a good offensive flow. Second half, we needed goals. It doesn't make a difference if you lose 20-0 or 2-0. We had to push forward. I made my runs through, and found the goal twice."

Nobody could score in the final 14 minutes of regulation or either one of the 10-minute overtime periods, leading to the shootout. Paul Hogan, AJ Jefferies, Reid Melton and Stuart Melton each scored for the Trojans. After allowing the first three Tigers offerings in, Paprocki shut the door on the final two attempts, including the last one off the foot of George Doran, setting off a celebration.

"Worse comes to worse, you guess," Paprocki said of the shootout. "Otherwise, you read where they're stepping and where their eyes are looking. In the end, it's all luck."