Naperville North refuses to step on the brakes.
The Huskies set aside the distractions of senior night and defeated visiting Wheaton Warrenville South 4-0 in DuPage Valley Conference action Tuesday night.
Alexis Dandridge and Abbie Boswell each scored twice for Naperville North (13-1, 3-0), which extended its winning streak to 13 games ahead of Thursday’s road game at Wheaton North, which will decide the conference championship.
“Our focus now is to keep our performance high, so we’re focused on coming into every game with high energy and being technical on the ball,” Dandridge said. “We want to outwork every team we play because by outworking every team everything else kind of falls into place.”
It did this time for the Huskies, who were coming off the exhilaration of winning the Naperville Invitational. They could easily have let down against a wounded Wheaton South that lost top player Erin Madigan for the season to injury and has several other starters playing hurt.
But Dandridge put any such thoughts to rest just 3:37 into the game when she ran onto a long pass from Morgan Krause and attacked against two defenders. The junior muscled one defender out of the way and then chipped the ball over the head of Tigers goalkeeper Nell Rosenthal.
“I kind of put my body against her and I just tried to get a touch over the goalie,” Dandridge said. “It just ended up going in my favor.”
So did everything else for the Huskies, who held the Tigers (9-7, 2-2) without a shot in the first half and enjoyed a 23-3 advantage overall.
Dandridge made it 2-0 and secured the first two-goal performance of her career on a tap-in with 30:30 left in the first half. Boswell started the play by passing to Maddie Krejci on the left side of the box, and Krejci sent a perfect cross between two defenders.
Naperville North continued to put pressure on the Tigers throughout the first half. Rosenthal did her best to keep her team in it, making five of her nine saves before halftime, but Boswell extended the Naperville North lead to 3-0 on a 17-yard rocket of a shot into the upper-right corner at 21:47 left in the first half.
“I think that coming off of this past weekend we kind of wanted the intensity to stay up,” Dandridge said. “Coach [Steve Goletz] always says we can do great things this year so we’re just working to please our coach and tonight we played for our seniors because it’s our last home game.”
Goletz was definitely pleased.
“It was great to be able to celebrate our seniors and what they’ve meant to our program,” he said. “I think the underclassmen were so happy to be able to give them a shutout win in convincing fashion. Lex putting tow in early definitely helped.”
Boswell put the exclamation point on the win when she tallied her 14th goal off an assist from Emily Wilhelm at the 26:05 mark of the second half. The senior star could have had a hat trick but hit the post on a breakaway in the first half.
“I always end up missing the easy shots and making the hard shots,” Boswell said with a laugh. “It’s OK. I’m so proud of our performance.
“I’m just really proud that we didn’t have any letdowns. We’ve been playing some really hard teams lately and I’m just so glad that we’re not getting complacent.”
Sophomore Elizabeth Cablk had to make only one save in recording her second straight shutout.
Le Cren is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
