[A preview of this week’s story in the Inside—Booster.]
By Jack Lydon
DePaul Prep Rams fell to the St. Ignatius Wolfpack 3-0 in the IHSA girls soccer sectional final on Friday evening at DePaul Prep. Wolfpack’s junior wing, Lauren Reed scored two goals, two minutes apart early in the first half giving the Wolfpack an commanding lead against conference rival DePaul Prep. Try as they did, the Rams (16-9-1, 5-2-1) just couldn’t put together a comeback against the stingy St. Ignatius defense.
“I was really thinking about winning this for my team and playing for my seniors. Then I guess I got really lucky on those two shots. But when I saw the opportunity take it, I did,” said River Forest resident, Lauren Reed.
Coming into the game, the Wolfpack (11-9-3, 3-3-2) focused on getting the ball into their center forward, junior Kayla Washington and so much on Reed.
“Kayla is our lead scorer. She's got like twenty-eight goals. Kayla is a classic striker. When you play with only one person up front, she has to be a big, strong capable player who can hold the ball up and wait for support,” St. Ignatius head coach Pam Whitehead said of Washington.
“Usually our goal is to get it to Kayla. I usually come up as back up. We kind of work together, but the main focus is to get it to Kayla,” Lauren Reed said of her teammate Washington.
“So I was lucky,” Reed added. She said “luck,” but two goals and two minutes is more than just luck. Reed was there to capitalize on the attention paid to Washington and that she did.
“Lauren is amazing because, first of all, she never came out of the game and absolutely she is positioned where she has to run up and down constantly,” Whitehead said of Reed, who is also a talented field hockey player. “And she is a third leading scorer [with 13 goals].” Lili Garcia is the Wolfpack’s second leading scorer with 17 goals.
DePaul Prep and St. Ignatius are both members of the Girls Catholic Athletic Conference and played each other on May 1st which ended in a 1-1 draw.
“It was our senior night. All of our seniors played. And you'll notice the [Senior Night] shirt that I wore tonight to remind them,” Whitehead said of the tie game.
Proud of her team’s rebound from the last match, Whitehead added, “It's just good combination play on the ground. I don't know if you noticed the tactical difference with DePaul. They like to send the long balls in, but we like to play between three of our key players up front with angle runs and drop balls; Good classic soccer.”
St. Ignatius managed to hold the Rams’ leading scorer junior Lucia Troutman scoreless despite early success by the Rams in pushing to the ball forward to Troutman.
DePaul Prep head coach and chair of the DePaul Prep Science Department, Kelly Keckler, was obviously disappointed after the game.
“Iggy was scouting [our last game against DeLaSalle]. They saw a lot of who we've become this season. The team that we were when we played them the first time is very different team than what we are now. . . We've figured out a lot of new tactics. We've been stronger and faster on the ball. We've been playing a lot of tougher competition throughout the whole season to gear up for this moment,” Keckler said after the game.
“No way would I've ever guessed it would be three zero. I think [Ignatius] brought their game winning boots today. It's as simple as that. We played almost same game as we played the first time we played them. I think it just came down to grit at the end of the day.”
St. Ignatius moves on to play Crystal Lake Central in the 2A super sectional on Tuesday.
