Varsity Boys Soccer continued District play this week with two matches. Northbrook came to our home field Wednesday and the Spartans travelled to Spring Woods on Saturday.

1/31: Northbrook Raiders

The Spartans squared off against the Northbrook Raiders Wednesday night.

Although the Raiders came out strong for the first several minutes, Stratford kept them off the board with stout defense and a few beautiful saves by goalie Davis Cooper, including a long curving shot that Cooper tipped out from the top right of the goal.

At the 22nd minute, on a pass by Lorenzo Maule from the sideline, Hanno Waguespack took two touches to the middle and shot a rocket to the upper right side of goal, off the bottom of the cross bar for a golazo Stratford!!

1-0

Just two minutes later, Stratford created another scoring opportunity when Maule made a cross to the middle to find Hanno hit a nice header on target that was saved by the Northbrook goalie.

Several other opportunities were created over the next 10 minutes with shots by Santi Chelala, Maule, and Fabu Ndayishimiye, but we just couldn’t get it in the goal.

But the tide turned with 7:00 remaining. On a quick counter-attack, the Raiders took the ball down the right sideline and snuck a ball past our goalie on the left side to equalize.

1-1

The Raiders really turned it on in the remaining minutes of the first half and added another goal to go up.

Halftime 1-2

The Spartans came out of halftime with some fire, taking three shots in the first few minutes of the second half.

In the 62nd minute, Jasper Hartman intercepted a ball from Northbrook and passed it along the sideline to Ryan Gifford, who took the open space up the left sideline. He passed off to Hanno, who dribbled through three Raiders, cutting into the middle and took a curving shot from 20 yards out, headed for the upper right corner of the goal, but was tipped out at the last second by the Raider keeper.

Stratford created some opportunities toward the end and had some shots on target, but couldn’t get anything to drop.

Final score, Northbrook 1-2.

2/3/24: Spring Woods Tigers

The Spartans played at the home field of one of the leading teams in the District on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The Spartans were shorthanded, missing four key players to club soccer obligations, but showed up prepared for the challenge as a clear underdog.

In the second minute of the game, the Spartans made a nice effort off of a cross by senior forward Fabu Ndayishimiye that Lorenzo Maule was able to head toward the goal, only to be deflected by a Spring Woods defender, resulting in a corner kick for the Spartans. On the ensuing corner kick, Santi Chelala sent a nice through ball from the right corner that made its way through traffic to the far side of the goal, where defender Ryan Gifford was able to receive it and put it in the net for an early 1-0 Spartan lead.

After the early goal, the remainder of the first half was a back-and-forth affair in which no goals were scored. Goalkeeper Davis Cooper made several nice saves fired at him from the talented Tigers of Spring Woods and combined with the Stratford defense, led by seniors Jonathan Lumpkin and Zealtiel Nava, to hold Spring Woods scoreless in the first half.

The second half started in similar fashion as the first half, with the Spartans again scoring two minutes into the half, as Chelala converted a free kick from just outside the box after a Spring Woods handball, to put the Spartans up 2-0. It looked like the Spartans were poised to pull off a major upset at this point in the game, but, alas, the highly talented Spring Woods teamed turned it on with a flurry of goals that the shorthand Spartans were unable to thwart.

One minute after the Spartans went up 2-0, Spring Woods was awarded a penalty kick on an unfortunate handball in the box, which Spring Woods converted to cut the Stratford lead to 2-1. Just 5 minutes later, Spring Woods was awarded another penalty kick and again converted to tie the game at 2-2 with 32 minutes remaining in the game.

This started a barrage of goals by Spring Woods against a depleted Spartans team that ultimately could not hang on. The game got a bit out of hand in this barrage, as Spring Woods ultimately scored 7 goals in the second half to flip the game from a 2-0 Stratford lead to a 7-2 Springs Woods victory.