Storm finally breaks through

Font Size

Email

Bookmark

Black Text

White Text

BURLINGTON -- The scoring opportunities just kept coming for South Elgin on Tuesday, but time and time again the Storm was denied.

That was until Ernesto Caballero finally broke through with a goal with 18:33 left to play to lift South Elgin to a 1-0 victory over host Burlington Central (2-2) in opening-round action of the Central High School Rocket Invitational.

"We were getting a lot of chances," said Caballero. "It was getting a little frustrating. We started to wonder what it was going to take to finally get a goal. Luckily, we finally got one in."

The Storm had nine shots on goal to just one for the Rockets before Caballero finally found the net.

With his back to the goal and 15-feet directly in front of the net, Caballero took a pass from Mike Alfini. The senior then quickly spun to his left and drilled the shot into the upper-right hand corner with his left foot.

"It was shaping up to be one of those frustrating games were we dominated on shots," said South Elgin coach Mark Neville. "I was starting to doubt that we were going to come out of here with a win. That was a big play by Ernesto. The most impressive thing was that he was able to put it in with his weaker foot. He was getting some shots with his dominant foot but sending them high."

The Storm also had leads late in its first two matches of the season, only to fritter them away. There were more anxious moments down the stretch against Central.

With just over 13 minutes left, South survived a free ball in the box when Central sent a shot just high of an open net. Then with 12:06 remaining, Alfini was whistled for a hand ball in the box to give Central's Kyle Reopelle a penalty kick.

However, Reopelle's shot hit the cross bar and South Elgin went on to run out the clock without further incident.

"That's a big step for us to be able to hang on to the lead," said Neville. "(Central) gets dangerous when their midfielders can get long passes up and over the defense. We moved a couple of our guys in the backfield up to play a 4-5 (formation) to try to keep the ball out of our end."

Central had its share of scoring chances with seven corner kicks and eight set plays on the offensive end -- but only two of those turned into shots on goal.

"It was a very well-played game by both teams," Burlington Central coach Mike Gecan said. "We were able to get set up in our offense. If we just could have gotten more shots off it could have been different."

Ryan Hicks recorded the clean sheet for South Elgin (1-2). Kyle DeRaedt had 12 saves in goal for the Rockets.