Cougars, West Aurora play to draw

Updated: March 22, 2011 5:24PM

Saturday's non-conference meeting was an opportunity for both West Aurora and Plainfield South to experiment and fine tune for the post-season.

To that end, both teams had enough ups and downs to equal out to a 1-1 tie. The Blackhawks now take a 15-5-1 overall mark into Tuesday's regular-season, home and DuPage Valley Conference finale all rolled in one with Wheaton Warrenville South.

Plainfield South's Colton Gallt executed a bicycle kick off the right post midway through the opening half for the Cougars' (15-3-2) most notable try while the West Aurora faithful responded when Daniel Rotolo's direct free kick 11 minutes prior to halftime caromed off the crossbar and down before Plainfield South was able to clear the ball.

The Cougars took a 1-0 lead 6:48 into the second half when West Aurora goalie Abel Diaz rushed out for a save and took down Tony Rodriguez giving Ivan Valencia the chance to successfully convert a penalty kick. But the Blackhawks got the equalizer with 17:43 remaining when Matt Koth's assist found Cesar Garcia on the right side for an eight-yard strike that serves as his ninth goal of the year.

"I was in the right place at the right time to finish it off Matt's pass," Garcia said. "This was a match we should've won so we have to keep playing hard and focus more in order to guarantee wins at this time of the year."

Preparing for the Oct. 19 IHSA Class 3A Regional opener was on the mind of West Aurora coach Joe Sustersic in mixing up his line-up and giving some players expanded playing time.

"Moving Matt up proved to be a nice experiment with him getting the assist and it was really nice to see the efforts of Miguel Moreno, he was one of our JV pull-ups to varsity," Susteric noted. "Those were among the options we tried today with the idea of having another weapon available 10 days from now."

Plainfield South coach David Brown also saw more positives than negatives: "We got to play a lot of people and I like the way we battled throughout the match. We knew coming in this wouldn't be an easy match and in that respect, a tie is not a bad result.

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