That's using his head

Plainfield South's Nate Jakusz (left) tries to push Plainfield North's Carlos Espinosa off the ball in Thursday's game.
(John Patsch/Staff Photographer)

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PLAINFIELD -- Shaun Etherington is accustomed to throwing his body at the ball.

He starts and plays half of every game in goal for the Plainfield North High School soccer team. Then, he takes off his rainbow jersey top and moves to the other end of the field. He plays forward with the same reckless abandon, if not the same colorful uniform.

Etherington threw his body at a loose ball in the crease and headed it into the net with 9 minutes 26 seconds left in the second overtime of North's 1-0 victory over district rival Plainfield South on Thursday night at Tiger Stadium. His game-winning goal was set up by Damien Silva and Nick Bartalone.

Silva, on a restart from near the 40, served the ball into the goalmouth. Bartalone, positioned on the far post, put a head on it and South keeper Kel Markert made a spectacular fingertip save to momentarily thwart the Tigers.

He deflected the ball off the crossbar. Etherington jumped on the rebound -- quite literally.

"Damien (Silva) played a great ball into the box," Etherington said. "It went off Bartalone's head and off the crossbar. The first thing I saw was the open goal. I was thinking, 'Just put it in as fast as I can.' So, I dove at it and put a head on it. I actually scored one like that earlier this year in the Morris Invite. I'm a goalie, so I'm used to giving up my body for everything."

"I was just making my run at the back post," Bartalone said. "I saw the ball coming across off the header from the defender. I just redirected it toward the goal, and the keeper pushed it off the crossbar. Shaun (Etherington) followed it up with a great header. If the keeper was about six inches shorter, my header would have gone in.

"And Shaun, oh, that was beautiful. He came diving in out of nowhere and scored on a diving header. It was a cool goal."

North outshot South 32-13 and controlled the ball for much of the game in the Cougars' end. Markert kept the Tigers (10-6-4, 3-4) from denting the scoreboard through regulation with his play in the nets. He leaped and deflected a shot by Limber Osorio off the crossbar at one point early in the second half and later charged out to snuff Etherington in a one-on-none situation.

South (4-13, 1-6) was unable to muster much offense, in part because of the loss of senior scoring leader Matt Philibin to a torn ACL. The Cougars have been shut out in four of five games since he went down with an injury. Coach Mike Freitag shuffled his lineup in a bid to generate more scoring opportunities, moving senior tri-captain Sefferino Aguirre and freshman Tony Rodriguez up top.

"Records don't mean anything when the Plainfield schools play each other," Freitag said. "We played as hard as we could. It just didn't bounce our way. I'm proud of the way the guys played. It's the best we've played in a long time.

"We actually had two guys playing forward for the first time all season. We changed the lineup a little bit to see if we would get some offense going. They both played well. It's just going to take them a few more games to get a little more chemistry out there. But good things will happen. They work hard.

"We've got to shoot more. We're not going to score if we don't shoot. And we still only had three or four shots at goal in the whole game. We've got to get that fixed. We played our hearts out tonight. The effort was there. It just didn't bounce our way tonight."

Etherington had something to do with that.

"He's a very good goalkeeper and kind of gets us going, gets us started," North coach Ty Winkelhake said. "He organizes our defense right away. He's also a hustler up there. He's non-stop all over the place. So, when we need somebody up there to get us going, he's our little spark. So, we've got to get him out of the goal.

"That was a typical Shaun move on that last goal. He throws his body anywhere and everywhere."

South beat North 4-1 when the two met a year ago. The Tigers won one game in 2006.

"Just watching them play last year -- the majority of the kids are the same," Winkelhake said. "Just seeing them actually understand the game of soccer now and being able to do what we were trying to get them to do last year, now, it seems like it's a whole new team. Their attitudes are so much better. They show up at practice ready to work. They want to learn and they want to get better. And they're excited. So, we're going to keep going."