Red Devils roll in home opener

By Curt Herron

After getting blanked by Naperville North in Tuesday's season opener, Hinsdale Central's soccer team was ready to get into the scoring act on Friday.

And the Red Devils had a perfect opportunity to do just that as they opened their home schedule facing Lincoln-Way West, which was making its varsity debut.

While it took the hosts a little while to find the net, the Red Devils eventually got things going and rolled to a 6-0 nonconference victory in Hinsdale.

It was a good way for coach Mike Wiggins' squad to head into Saturday's match against Tremper that will be played in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

"We learned a little bit Tuesday and obviously the first 20 minutes today was an interesting start to a game that we felt we had under control but still needed to work to get the first goal," Wiggins said.

"After that, we started to relax a little bit. Anytime you go 96 minutes without scoring to start off your year you put a little pressure on yourself. This was good to prepare us for later in the season.

"We're going to treat Saturday like we would a game at the end of the year. We're going up to a state championship-caliber setting in Kenosha and we'll play a really respected program and see how we do."

Mike Bucheleres scored a pair of goals to join four other Red Devil players who were able to find the net against the first-year Warriors.

Both of his tallies came off assists from Robbie LaRocque during the final 14:37 of the opening half to help the hosts claim a 3-0 lead at the break.

Hinsdale Central (1-1) had several good scoring chances before that but wasn't able to get the ball past Warrior goalkeeper Richard Wyskiel.

Cameron Legan had two shots halted, Andrew Worthington and LaRocque were stopped on close attempts and Michael Oleszkiewicz sent a header to the keeper.

The Red Devils finally scored over 25 minutes into the match when Taylor Cole made a long pass that was touched by LaRocque before Bucheleres put it in.

Legan was responsible for his team's second goal when he moved the ball up field before firing in a line drive with 12:24 left in the opening half.

Bucheleres made it a 3-0 match when he connected following a pass from LaRocque with exactly 10 minutes remaining before halftime.

"We learned a lot about people in different positions in our season opener on Tuesday," Bucheleres said. "So coming into today we were just looking to get the win, go at it hard and prepare for Saturday.

"We've been practicing pretty hard so far. We have a special group of kids so if wed put in the effort and go at it hard I think we're going to get the results that we want.

"A lot of us have been playing together since we were eight years old so there's a lot of chemistry. A lot of people have experience of being at state and again we have high expectations for ourselves."

Lincoln-Way West only had one shot on goal, a long free kick late in the first half that was hauled in by Jack O'Donnell, who recorded the shutout.

The Red Devils kept up their barrage in the second half as Eric Loebig, LaRocque and Bucheleres each fired off a pair of shots that were stopped.

Lenny Zavala and Oleszkiewicz also came up empty on good scoring chances before Hinsdale Central finally struck again.

With 23:25 remaining in the match, Loebig sent a pass toward Andrew Virgili, who knocked in his squad's fourth goal.

Hinsdale took a 5-0 lead with 7:52 left when Mike Oleferchik scored on a header, off a long pass from Charlie Hetke.

And then just 1:16 later, Ryan Johnson put the finishing touches on the scoring when he put a shot into an open net.

"It's still early in the season with regards to what we're looking at and how we're sorting things out and where players are playing and how things fit into our formation," Wiggins said.

"Everything that we do has an eye toward seven or eight weeks down the road. We have guys who we think are very skillful so we'll take every day and every game to learn where we're at."

2009 Schedule