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Girls Soccer: It’s May’s day in Red Devils win over Lions
Updated: May 29, 2012 8:48PM
Friday was Casey May’s day.
The Hinsdale Central junior scored late in both halves as the host Red Devils stunned top-seeded Lyons Township 2-0 in a Class 3A regional final in Hinsdale.
Hinsdale Central’s victory avenged a 1-0 regular season loss to the rival Lions and vaulted them into the semifinals of the Downers Grove South Sectional, where the eighth-seeded Red Devils will face No. 4 seed Morton on Tuesday.
“I’m actually speechless,” May said. “It was definitely a team effort. My team did a great job. We had lots of control in the middle and our defenders did an amazing job getting the ball forward. It was a collective effort of moving the ball around and then attacking at the right moment is what created those opportunities.”
In a tight match that saw each side muster only six shots apiece, May made hers count. Her first goal came with 1:32 left in the first half when she took a pass from midfielder Meghan Schick and beat three defenders before moving to her left and unleashing an 18-yard shot that beat LT goalie Maggie Orlowski inside the right post.
May then cemented the upset with 3:22 remaining in the second half, scoring on a 10-yard shot after a feed from junior midfielder Madeline Engelking.
Aside from that, the Red Devils (8-12-2) were unable to get anything going. But thanks to suffocating defense by the hosts, neither was LT, which had won regional titles in each of the past nine years and 14 of the last 15.
The Lions (15-4-4) weren’t able to string any passes together consistently and rarely got open looks at the net as Hinsdale Central defenders Lauren Shroyer, Caitlin Smith and Erin Smith and midfielders Engelking, Schick, Maeve McLaughlin and Christa Kuhlman swarmed to the ball.
“We knew if we beat Glenbard West in the first round of the playoffs we were going to play our biggest rival, LT,” May said. “They are very good at playing the direct ball. Their forwards are very fast and the only way to prevent that was to get high pressure, so this whole week our training sessions were focused around high pressure and doubling up on the ball. I think we really committed to that today, so definitely our training sessions paid off.”
That on-the-ball pressure was missing during the first meeting 17 days ago, so the Lions were not expecting that style of play.
“From the first whistle they pressured the heck out of us,” LT coach Bill Lanspeary said. “They seemed to have two players around the ball at all times and we got off our game early. We couldn’t seem to find the open player and then we started playing kick ball.
“After the first 10 minutes we thought, okay, they just came out with that fire, it will die down a little bit. They kept it up for 80 minutes, to their credit.”
LT’s best chance at equalizing came on a corner kick by Ali Kowalski with 31:38 left in the second half, but Emily Lange headed the ball high over the net. Iowa-bound midfielder Sarah Mazur was the only Lion to put a shot on frame and three of her drives were saved by Hinsdale Central goalie Riley Glenn.
“They were on us every single second,” Mazur said. “They were double-teaming, communication on the field. We really didn’t have much time on the ball at all the entire game.
“In the second half we (attacked) a little harder, put three forwards up there but they were all over us, so congrats to them.”
