Lauser comes up big for Lyons

Updated: September 20, 2011 8:25PM

With star midfielder Elliot Borge serving a one-game suspension after picking up a red card in Sunday’s overtime loss to Libertyville in the Pepsi Showdown title match, Lyons needed someone to step up.

Jon Jakob Lauser did. The junior midfielder scored his second career goal – and first game-winner – with 37:21 left in the second half and that was all the host Lions needed to hold off Downers Grove North 1-0 in West Suburban Conference Silver Division action Tuesday in Western Springs.

“It feels really good,” Lauser said. “I felt it was a really important goal this time. The first time was [an] important goal, too, but this time I wasn’t sure if we would have scored [another] goal today. We needed to win this game.”

The Lions (6-3-2, 1-1) needed the win to stay in contention in the Silver race because they had been upset 1-0 by Glenbard West last week in their league opener. This match began in much the same fashion, with Lyons failing to generate much offense in a scoreless first half.

That changed early in the second half when Ben Larson sent a corner kick in from the right side. Downers North goalie Garrett Lems dove forward to punch the ball away but the Trojans failed to clear and Lauser got the ball just outside the top of the box. His shot beat Lems into the lower left corner.

“I stopped it to the right side and shot through space to the left,” Lauser said. “The goalie could have gotten the ball because it slowed down because the grass really holds the ball, but it dropped really unluckily for the goalie just over his hands.”

Lauser, a foreign exchange student from Stuttgart, Germany, was one of the few offensive bright spots for the Lions.

“We’ve moved him around a little bit,” Lyons coach Paul Labbato said. “We think we’ve found the right spot for him and he’s pretty dangerous in the center mid facing up to people. Brett [Heimerdinger] and Mark Pawula did a nice job of playing off him. Those were our other center mids who were rotating in with him and around him, and they did a nice job of getting him the ball facing him up so he can go at people.”

But Lauser was the first to admit the effort left a lot to be desired. Fatigue was the main reason, as the Lions were playing their third match in four days, two of which went to overtime.

“It was not a good game from either side,” Lauser said. “We did not have enough emotion in the game. We couldn’t find the intensity that we needed to make this a good game. In the end, we won 1-0, but we should have won [by a] higher [margin].

“I think that the fact that we were still tired from Pepsi played a huge factor and also the field is not in the best condition after the Pepsi Showdown.”

Even so, Downers North (3-10-1, 1-2) managed only five shots and goalie Max Hadley made four saves for LT. The Trojans, who are 3-3 since star striker Cullen Cummings returned from a five-game suspension, nearly tied it with 3:40 remaining when Cummings fully extended to volley a 45-yard pass from Hugo Pacheco, but the ball missed the right post.

Downers North coach Brian Gervase played Cummings in the midfield in an effort to shore up a leaky defense.

“We’ve been giving up a few extra goals lately, so we really kind of committed ourselves to not giving up goals today, so probably we were a little bit more ‘blah’ than normal,” Gervase said. “We had to take Cullen out of where we like to play him, but I thought he had a really nice match today. We set a goal to come into this game and give up [only] a goal, so we should feel very good about ourselves.”

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