Girls soccer: York, Lyons advance to sectional championship game at Hinsdale Central

Catherine Carter didn’t know what it would be like to take a penalty shot with the season on the line until late Tuesday night in Hinsdale.

The York freshman technically could have afforded to miss as upset-minded Downers Grove North had matched the Dukes with three conversions up to that point during a Class 3A Hinsdale Central sectional semifinal.

On the game’s final try, Carter didn’t miss.

“If you miss, you miss and you’ve got to move on,” she said. “But at the end of the day you’ve got to put it in the back of the net because it’s one of the easiest shots you can make. It’s a 50/50 chance. She (the goalie) can go back and she can make that save. It really just depends, but I chose correctly today.”

York (18-1-1) advances to Friday’s sectional final against Lyons, a team that hadn’t lost a conference game since 2016 before York prevailed in a shootout on May 6 this spring to win the West Suburban Silver.

“I didn’t take one in the Lyons game,” Carter explained. “I’ve gotten better at it over the years. I always practice and you’ve got to have your spot. I was going to go the other way, but I saw her going that way so I decided to take that.”

Downers Grove North (11-12-2) seemingly stunned the Dukes with 24:16 remaining when senior Kaitlyn Parker broke the scoreless tie.

But just 46 seconds later, the Dukes tied the game on senior Sophia Musial’s penalty kick.

“What a game,” Musial said. “As soon as they scored we knew we had to keep creating opportunities. We needed to keep pushing them because as soon as we get that one goal on them it’s so much easier for us to play.”

While they haven’t had to fight back from behind often this season, the Dukes have shown they’re capable of winning that way, too.

“Honestly, our fight is really great with out team,” Musial said. “We always have the mentality of getting the next goal and just focusing on the next one.”

There were chances of scoring the go-ahead goal from both teams in regulation as well as in overtime, including a shot off the post from Musial early in the second overtime. Ultimately, the game had to be decided by the shootout.

The Trojans had the edge in the shootout after goalkeeper Gianna Hunsche stopped York’s second attempt and freshman Campbell Thulin and senior Addison Liszka buried theirs for Downers Grove North. Hunsche was coming off a regional title game in which she saved three of six penalty kicks in a win over Fenwick in the Fenwick regional last Friday.

Junior Elle Larsen made it three straight conversions for the Trojans but they wouldn’t make another. That’s because York junior goalkeeper Ava Lewandowski saved the final two attempts that came her way.

“You’ve got to trust in yourself and you’ve got to trust in your skills,” Lewandowski said. “A big part of soccer is playing with confidence. If you play at not your full potential you’re not going to reach high standards, so it’s playing with the confidence that you have the skill to do so and it’s knowing and trusting your teammates which is such a big thing.”

York had beaten Downers Grove North, 4-0, on April 2.

“As a first year head coach and still a young guy there’s going to be some learning curves no matter what you do,” Trojans coach Marty Manske said. “Anything you do the first time is always going to be the hardest, but I’ve been around soccer for so long and I’vd been watching high school soccer for probably 15-16 years in a row now at this point and the thing is getting the girls to kind of buy in, getting them motivated and trusting the process. Our schedule this year, we played eight of the 32 teams left. I can’t be more proud of the my first season and the seniors, juniors, sophomores and freshmen - the whole entire team.”

Lyons 1, Hinsdale Central 0:

It was payback time for Lyons on Tuesday afternoon.

The Lions had high hopes for making a run at the Class 3A state title last season, losing just one regular season game.

Lyons’ dreams of hoisting a state championship trophy, though, were dashed in an overtime defeat to West Suburban Conference Silver Division rival Hinsdale Central in a sectional final.

Led by the return of 11 seniors, the Lions set out all season to avoid a similar fate.

On Tuesday at Hinsdale Central, the second-seeded Lions earned a measure of revenge by knocking off third-seeded Hinsdale Central 1-0 on its home turf in a Class 3A sectional semifinal at Dickinson Field.

“I thought we played really well,” Lyons coach Bill Lanspeary said. “The wind played a big factor in both halves, but the effort the kids played was phenomenal. They generated a lot of chances in the first half. Give Hinsdale Central a ton of credit. They played really well. The last 10 minutes they had a couple of great chances and we were fortunate to hang on.”

The Lions (18-3-2) also defeated the Red Devils 2-1 in the regular season on April 23. With the win, the Lions advance to play the winner of York-Downers Grove North on Friday at 6 p.m. in the sectional title game.

Lyons senior midfielder Izzi Wirtz gave the visitors an early advantage by scoring on a half-bicycle kick from 12 yards out in the 11th minute. Teammate Zibby Michaelson set up the goal with a perfectly placed corner kick that caused Hinsdale Central goalie Emeline McClenahan to come off the goalie line, leaving an opening for Wirtz to blast her shot into the open net for a 1-0 lead.

Wirtz doubled her fun after recording an assist in the regular season victory over the Red Devils.

“Normally off corners I head it in, but I saw it bouncing out and I didn’t see any other chance but to go over my head with my left foot, too,” Wirtz said. “It was pretty special to score, especially against a rival team. It was big to get a goal, and to help contribute to the team. I definitely felt very excited to score.”

Wirtz said her fourth goal of the season — and first in the playoffs — helped calm the Lions down.

“We always try and score early as we can to set a tone,” Wirtz said. “That’s important for us, especially after the playoffs last year when we tended to score later in games and everybody was nervous. It definitely brought some nerves down today to score early.”

Hinsdale Central (15-8) had defeated West Suburban Silver Oak Park-River Forest 1-0 in a regional final on Friday to win back-to-back regional championships, but couldn’t duplicate the magic of last season’s run to the supersectional.

The Red Devils, who beat WSC Division rivals York and Lyons last season in the playoffs, were stymied by the aggressiveness by the Lions on Tuesday.

McClenahan rarely had a break in a steamy first half in which the Lions had a heavy wind advantage.

McClenahan had seven saves in the first 25 minutes, 10 in the opening 31 minutes and 13 in the first half.

The Lions’ two goalies, Anna Bigenwald and Nora Ezike, spent most of the match watching the action unfold on the other side of the field. Bigenwald recorded one easy save on a slow roller in the 36th minute.

The 6-foot-2 Ezike, an elite basketball player with multiple Power Five Conference offers, notched two stops in the first six minutes to end with four saves in the final 40 minutes.

Hinsdale Central’s best chances to tie the game all came late in the second half. The Red Devils nearly tied the game via a two-shot sequence in the 63rd minute, but Ezike dove on two loose balls to stop the threat.

With just over a minute left, Hinsdale Central senior forward captain Cate McDonnell drilled a curving line-drive shot that smacked off the far post to narrowly miss by a few inches of tying the game.

“It was obviously late in the game, so I was just trying to get a shot off and I had a good touch and I thought it was going on frame,” McDonnell said. “It stinks that the wind curved it a little because in eyes, it was going right in.”

One of four captains, McDonnell said the Red Devils should be proud of a stellar season.

“We had a young team coming in and we had a lot of talent and confidence,” she said. “I thought we did a good job harnessing that this season and I feel it was great to see how we all meshed together to have a really good season.”

— Bobby Narang, Shaw Local News Network