Sandburg too much for Vikings

Updated: May 5, 2011 9:20PM

Sandburg and Homewood-Flossmoor’s girls soccer teams always expect to see each other in the playoffs.

So the two Southland soccer powers tend to view their regular season meeting as a chance to earn a mental edge over their biggest rival.

Advantage Sandburg.

Ashley Youngwirth and Morgan Manzke scored within three minutes on either side of halftime and Victoria Kappel made six saves to lead the host Eagles to a 2-0 victory Thursday over the Vikings in a potential sectional final preview.

The win clinched the Southwest Suburban Blue for Sandburg (14-2-1, 5-0).

“Hopefully we will see them in the playoffs and it’ll be another good game,” Youngwirth said.” We played pretty good, we possessed [the ball against] them pretty well and dominated most of the game.”

Youngwirth gave Sandburg a 1-0 lead with a bullet into the top corner from just outside the box with 1:48 remaining in the first half.

The goal came less than two minutes after Ciara O’Shea ripped a stellar 40-yard shot over Vikings goal keeper Kim Boehm (five saves), only to see it clang off the far post.

Manzke made it 2-0 when she let fly with a shot of 27 yards that was too hot for Boehm. Meghan Carmody played a vital role in the goal – forcing a turnover in the corner before playing to ball back to O’Shea, who assisted on the score.

“Everybody worked so hard tonight, especially [Carmody],” Manzke said. “It was a great team effort and I was there to put it away.”

Kelly Lewers came closest to scoring for Homewood-Flossmoor (15-2, 4-1). She stole the ball deep inside the Eagles’ half 12:08 into the game and broke down the left wing before riffling a shot on goal that Kappel saved at her near post.

Kappel posted her 14th shutout of the season behind strong performances from her back line of Carson Moesle, Paige Bendell, Carly Katalinic and Kyleen Kenny – which did what no other team has been able to do: hold Lewers and the Vikings scoreless.

“I’m so proud of everyone, our team defense is amazing,” Moesle said. “From the front to the back to our goalie – everyone is part of our defense. [Lewers] is a great threat, but we knew if we worked together and always have each other’s back we could get it done.”

Lewers, who played while gutting out an illness, was unable to improve on her impressive haul of 35 goals in the first 16 games this season.

“They put in two goals we won’t make the mistake of letting in again and they ran a good possession system against us,” H-F coach Charlie Ward said. “We haven’t seen that style of play, and now that we’ve seen it we’ll go home and make our adjustments and hopefully we’ll see them in the playoffs and we’ll be able to do better.”

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