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Langan sees into the future in Wheaton North's regional win over Lake Park By Gary Larsen
Just before the kick, the Falcons’ Pat Langan walked over to teammate Josh Bennett. “He said ‘I’m flicking it to you and you’re putting it away’,” Bennett said. Muilli’s free kick found Langan’s head, Langan’s flick forward found Bennett’s feet, and Bennett looked up and found the goal in the 57th minute. Game, set, match. A Wheaton North team playing in its 16th game decided by a single goal finished on the good side of that equation, when Bennett buried the game’s lone goal. Lake Park fought hard to the finish but couldn’t close the deal on a goal. It was Bennett’s 6th goal of the year, to go with 8 assists. “Vito’s got a good leg so I knew it was probably going to go far,” Bennett said. “I saw two guys out of the corner of my eyes and I knew I had them beat. Pat gave me a perfect ball and I just put it home. I knew the keeper would move to the left because the ball was going that way, so I just went the opposite direction.” As the No. 9 seed of the Hoffman Estates sectional, the Falcons (6-9-5) took on No. 5 Lake Park (10-11-4) in a rematch of a 1-1 game played on September 5. On Wednesday, the two teams played a similarly hard-fought and evenly-matched game. Lake Park attacked hard at the outset with the wind at its back, but the Falcons’ back line and keeper Nick Barry kept them out of net. Barry slid to the post to stop a Dewey Admire blast early on, and he diverted a Mike Keane shot past the post before halftime, keeping the game scoreless at the break. The Falcons (6-9-5) have grown comfortable in close, scoreless games this year. “At halftime I said to them ‘we’ve been here before’,” Wheaton North coach Bryce Cann said. “We’ve played in this (situation) all year long. Playing up 1-0 or down 1-0, we’ve been there so many times that it gets to be old hat.” With the wind at their backs in the second half, the Falcons figured to spend some time in their attacking third. They did, consistently earning restarts on the Lancers’ half of midfield throughout the second 40 minutes. “I thought we picked it up in the second half,” Bennett said. “Our fans picked it up a lot, too, and that helped a lot. In the first half our intensity was a little weak. They had a lot of chances in the first half and we knew we had to come out stronger in the second half.” “Lake Park’s a physical team, they’ve got some big players, and we knew we had to step it up. We just came out soft in the first half.” Mike Lenzi nearly rolled a shot underneath Lake Park keeper Marty Lupou in the 50th minute after a throw-in deep on the Lancers’ end, and the Falcons attacked well to start the second half. “We slid Josh (Bennett) outside and he was dangerous in creating some opportunities for us, and I thought Pat (Langan) had another tremendous game,” Cann said. “Lenzi has been available to us at times and when he is, he’s a sparkplug for us. He did some real nice things for us tonight. He was about a touch away from having something brilliant happen.” Lake Park fought into the wind after Bennett’s goal, and fought hard for an equalizer. “I was pleased that balls didn’t start getting behind our back line until the last fifteen minutes of the match – when they started pressing and pushing a little bit more, and we just had to be careful about not getting caught with numbers down, and putting Nick in too difficult a position,” Cann said. North defenders Muilli, Elvin Ahmeti, Zak Gudanik and Dan O’Malley got the starting nod in back, and the Falcons got a fine effort put forth in front of Barry, who also made a diving save of a Lancers’ shot in the 54th minute. Muilli also raced back to break up a potentially dangerous drive into the box by an attacking Lancer, late in the contest. “I thought our back line did another nice job of not putting themselves out of position, keeping themselves in the play, and not making it easy for Lake Park to get anything on frame.” Langan posted his 4th assist of the season with Wednesday’s flick, to go with a team-leading 10 goals on the year. No. 9 Wheaton North plays No. 4 Bartlett (15-5) at home on Saturday with a regional title on the line. The game time has changed from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. due to ACT testing.
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Wheaton North's 2009 results
Postseason play
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Wednesday’s regional game between Wheaton North and Lake Park turned on one play, starting with a free kick taken by North’s Vito Muilli near midfield.