Indian Creek gets past Newark

WATERMAN - Indian Creek not only avenged its lone home loss from the regular season, the Timberwolves virtually flipped the outcome with Monday's 5-2 victory over Newark in the opening round of the 29th annual Little Ten Conference Tournament.

While the Norsemen managed a 4-2 victory on the same field back on Sept. 15, the Timberwolves jumped out to a 2-0 lead and then countered each Newark goal in order to advance to a Wednesday 4:30 p.m. semifinal at top-seeded Somonauk.

"The first time we played we were missing a few guys and tried a few different things that didn't work," IC coach Eric Schrader said. "So we were looking forward to this, and from the start we wanted to prove we were the better team and that we deserved the No. 4 seed."

In a sport where quick starts almost always pay off, Indian Creek (11-7-0) took the lead just 7:16 into the contest as Matt Kyler set up Tyler Ostrom for a five-yarder from the left side. A little over 10 minutes later, Kyle Lieving's through ball led to Shaquille Crayton's 10-yarder from right of center.

Newark's Juan Elizalde set up Nick Bond for a 12-yarder from the left wing with 18:31 left before intermission, but the Timberwolves rebuilt their two-goal led in six minutes when Bret Ostrom fed Caleb Gaston for a two-yard tap-in near the left post.

Indian Creek went up 4-1 just 7:39 into the second half thanks to Tyler Ostrom who used goalie Aaron Bolton's long boot to lead him to an 11-yard strike. When Bond picked up his team-best 12th goal of the year for Newark (8-9-3) with 10 minutes still to be played, the T-wolves negated that as well with Gaston blasting in a nine-yarder from the right off a scramble.

"We didn't come to play tonight and our defense was a little too lax and with that combination we couldn't get it done," Bond said before Norsemen coach Carl Grubb concurred.

"We weren't here today as a team mentally. They didn't have this goalie the first time and as a former keeper, he's really good, but outside of a couple good runs, we allowed all our weaknesses to show," Grubb added.

In other first-round action, No. 2 seed Hinckley-Big Rock (16-2-1) cruised to a 6-0 win over No. 7 Serena (1-15-3) while No. 3 Earlville-Leland (11-5-1) sent Paw Paw (8-10-1) into the consolation bracket with a 6-1 loss. H-BR's Royals host the E-L Red Raiders in Wednesday's other 4:30 p.m. semifinal.

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