York has familiar feeling in regional loss

When senior Ryan Schroeder missed an opportunity to score with about 12 minutes remaining during the York soccer team's 1-0 loss to St. Charles East Oct. 17, he took it hard.

"I partly blame myself," Schroeder said of the Dukes' season-ending loss in the St. Charles East Regional semifinals. "I missed one right in front of the net. I could've put one away and I put it wide. I could've tied it and gave us a shot. It's just tough because it's my last game in high school at York. It's a team effort, and we didn't play bad. We were just terribly unlucky."

That sort of summed up the entire season for the Dukes.

York (7-10-3) lost four games by one goal, including a 1-0 loss to West Suburban Conference Silver Division champion Oak Park and a 2-1 loss to Silver runner-up Lyons Township.

"It was not a terrible season," Schroeder said. "I would've liked to have at least repeated what we did last year and win a regional. I would say it was a season of games we should've won and for some reason we always came up short. It seemed like it was always in big games, too. It was just disappointing to lose some of the games we did."

St. Charles East, which lost to St. Charles North 3-2 in overtime Friday in the regional final, scored the only goal against York early in the contest off a corner kick.

Schroeder played varsity as a freshman and was the only freshman on the team. He took a year off from soccer to run cross country before returning his junior season and helping the Dukes win a regional championship and then led the team in scoring this season with nine goals.

"I would say my season was sub par," Schroeder said. "I was the leading scorer and scored more goals than last year (5), but I didn't have nearly as many assists as I did last year (team-leading 12). And there were certain games where I had plenty of chances and just couldn't finish. I just wish we could've made it a little further this year."

Schroeder hopes to play at the collegiate level and would like to be reunited with former York teammate Brian Visser, who is the starting goalkeeper at DePaul.

York, which finished fourth in the Silver with a 3-3 record this season, will graduate senior starters Schroeder, Garry Howell (3 goals, team-high 6 assists), Adam Ahern (4 goals, 2 assists), goalkeeper Evan Johnson and defender Chris Quaglia. Junior Ryan Roberts (5 goals, 5 assists) will be the Dukes' top returning scorer next season.