Long rallies Wheaton Academy to title

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Leah Fortune’s extraordinary soccer skills are well known, but she is far from the only weapon Wheaton Academy has.

Fellow senior Becca Long scored two goals, including the game-winner, as the host Warriors rallied from an early deficit to beat St. Francis 4-1 Friday night in the championship game of their own Class 2A sectional. It is Wheaton’s first sectional title since 2004, the year it won the Class A state championship.

“What Leah does, people can’t match, but what Becca does for our team is unbelievable,” Warriors coach Scott Marksberry said. “I often say that she is the engine of our team. She keeps us rolling.”

St. Francis (22-4), which was appearing in its first sectional final, took advantage of a defensive giveaway to take a 1-0 lead on a goal by freshman Ellie Sterner with 30:54 left in the first half. But the Spartans would be outshot 24-1 the rest of the way.

Jenn Lee tied the game off a feed from Fortune four minutes later. The Warriors (19-3-2) went ahead at the 33:55 mark of the second half when Long fired a 25-yard shot just under the crossbar.

“The coaches have been telling me to shoot more because apparently I don’t take enough shots,” Long said. “Everybody had stopped because we thought there was a foul, but I was like, ‘I’ll just hit this and see what happens.’ It worked.”

Long made it 3-1 by converting a penalty kick after Fortune was dumped in the box with 24:50 left. Freshman Ally Witt finished the scoring off a Fortune assist with 12:15 remaining.

“This is an awesome feeling to get this far,” Long said. “I felt like we kind of got down at first, but especially at halftime we all got our heads up, everyone encouraged each other and we came out with a lot more intensity in the second half.”

“To me the killer was the third goal,” St. Francis coach Tim Dailey said. “We’ve come back before, but they wore us down in the second half. They deserved it. We’ve got a young team and this was a good experience for us.”