Chargers' season ends with 4-0 defeat

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BARRINGTON – The Dundee-Crown boys soccer team had the first two legitimate chances to score in the Chargers’ match against Lake Zurich allowed on Tuesday.

Unfortunately for D-C, those were the only chances the Bears would allow, and the Chargers didn’t convert.

Consequently, D-C’s swan song came quicker than the Chargers would have liked, as they dropped the Class 3A Barrington Regional semifinal, 4-0, to the Bears.

Top-seeded Lake Zurich (18-1-3) will take on No. 2 Barrington, which beat No. 3 Cary-Grove, 4-3, in double overtime in the second semifinal on Tuesday. Barrington and Lake Zurich will meet in the regional title match at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

The Bears scored all four goals in the first half, underscoring the Chargers’ season-long problem: When the first half went poorly, so did the match.

“We have talked about this all season,” Dundee-Crown coach Rey Vargas said. “When we have a good first half, we generally have a good second half, too. That’s the way it goes: You have to establish the game’s tempo early on and we just weren’t able to do that.”

It appeared D-C (9-13) would set an upbeat tempo – one that swung in the Chargers’ favor – early. The two scoring opportunities the Chargers had within the first 10 minutes of play were the product of organization and production from the center midfielders and the forwards.

Senior forward Ricardo Carillo shot from point-blank range at the Lake Zurich goal, but goalkeeper Mike Messmer came up with a huge save.

About five minutes later, Carillo tried again, blasting a shot from the right side of the Bears’ goal that hit the near post before sailing out of bounds.

“I thought the midfielders and the forwards played tremendously,” Vargas said. “In the back was where we broke down.”

Defensively, the Chargers tried to play a flatback four defense in the first half, but the Bears exploited it too well, setting up the offense on the outside, then weaving inside for all four attacks. The Bears scored all four of their goals by developing the play on the outside and then dishing inside off cross passes.

D-C changed defensive theories in the second, utilizing a sweeper, and managed to hold the Bears scoreless, but the damage already had been done.

“It was a case of too little, too late,” Vargas said.

For Lake Zurich, the four-goal cushion was exactly what coach Mike Schmitz thought the Bears would need in order to stay in control.

“They’re a good team that works very hard,” Schmitz said. “They have some dangerous players, and we knew they were capable of getting to us if we didn’t watch it.”

Despite the loss, the Chargers’ season wasn’t all for naught.

D-C pulled out a huge win against Cary-Grove earlier in the season, handing the Trojans their first loss of the season and their only loss in the Fox Valley Conference Valley division. The win helped D-C finish third in the FVC Valley.

“At the beginning of the season, I wasn’t sure what to expect from this team,” Vargas said. “But we made a nice run at conference and we trained as hard as we could for this game. They really poured their hearts out tonight and I’m really proud of them for that.”