Naperville Central coach Troy Adams had a feeling his team’s path to success would not be a straight line this fall.
Sure enough, the Redhawks have been at times both ragged and brilliant, often within the same game.
They were brilliant enough long enough Thursday to knock off Sandburg 4-0 in a Best of the West Tournament game at Memorial Stadium.
The win, coming two days after a 2-1 upset loss to Bartlett, kept alive the Redhawks’ hopes of advancing to the tournament title game for the fourth straight year.
“We have a lot of players who (are learning) the understanding of how to play, the intensity,” Adams said. “There are no off games on our schedule. There’s no time where you can go, ‘Hey, we’re going to roll and give 50-percent effort.'”
Christopher Schwaiger has realized that. The senior midfielder, who is playing with an ankle injury that will require surgery after the season, scored the game-winning goal on a penalty kick in the first half and set up the second goal early in the second half.
“When he is active and he is involved, he’s a very good player,” Adams said. “That’s what I’ve talked to Chris about is — you’ve got to be 100 percent involved. You can’t take plays off.
“We’re not the type of team that can have one of our players take a 10-minute stretch and not play. I thought he did a much better job of staying active, staying involved, looking to do what we want to do.”
Schwaiger and his teammates did it well in the second half. He ran onto a lead pass from Noah Canlas and lofted a shot over Sandburg goalkeeper Derek McCurdy. Sophomore Jimmy Kalkofen outraced a defender to the goal line to redirect the ball into the net to give the Redhawks (2-2) a 2-0 lead with 34:46 remaining.
“Noah is great in the midfield with his distribution so I always know that he’ll find me,” Schwaiger said. “I made a run, he played me in behind, I saw the goalie was off his line.
“I was actually trying to score. It was off the mark a little bit but Jimmy was there to put it in, so I’ll take the assist.”
Junior Taha Din made an even better assist four minutes later when he won a ball far out on the left wing and sent a diagonal pass to a streaking Kyle Forest, who bounced a downward header past McCurdy.
“We’ve been working a lot on that in practice,” Din said. “Coach Adams is always on us to put the ball where it needs to be and have the vision to get it off your foot fast. Because when you do that the game moves a lot faster and the defense can’t even touch you.”
Neal Hasan capped the scoring with 10:30 left when he poked a shot off the inside of the right post after Kalkofen took a pass from Din and beat two defenders in the box.
Joseph Kallikadan made four saves and Wesley Sprague one to share the shutout for Naperville Central, which wants to be playing its best soccer by the end of the season.
“That’s the goal,” Schwaiger said. “We have a motto…to always be taking steps forward. We thought Tuesday was a step back, but today was a step forward and we hope to keep going.”
In other results, Bartlett (2-1) edged Waubonsie Valley 1-0 on a first-half goal by Tim Riordan, holding the Warriors to seven shots.
“They got an early goal and it’s hard to come back and get through that defense when they’re parking the bus,” Waubonsie Valley coach Jose Garcia said. “That’s a credit to them for keeping us away from the goal.”
Matt Le Cren is a freelance writer for the Naperville Sun.
