Oak Forest overwhelms Kankakee, wins regional championship

KANKAKEE – The more the season has gone on, the more Oak Forest girls soccer head coach Mike DaLuga has seen his team better face adversity.

So when Kankakee scored the first goal nearly four minutes into Friday’s IHSA Class 2A Kankakee Regional championship game, DaLuga wasn’t phased and knew his Bengals team had what it took to punch back. After giving up the initial goal, visiting Oak Forest punched in three unanswered for a 3-1 championship win..

“There’s been some games that we’ve got scored on first, and we put our heads down and we struggle,” DaLuga said. “It actually happened in our first game of the year. We played a really good team in Lockport, and they put it on us right away, and we shut down, and we got on everyone, and we said, ‘there’s no other game that could be like this, right?’ And so every game we’ve just gotten a little bit better at it.”

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Kankakee's Jocelyn Sanchez maintaines possession against Oak Forest's Maddie Walsh during the Kays' 3-1 loss in the IHSA Class 2A Kankakee Regional championship on Friday, May 23, 2025. (Tiffany Blanchette)

It certainly helped that the Bengals were aggressive and pressing all night long with their defense. DaLuga preaches to his players that they are as athletic and physical as any team they play, and his players show that.

“I think we were very aggressive,” Oak Forest senior Lilly Everitt said. I don’t think we ever stepped off the gas. We came out very hard in the very first half, and I think that really helped us. I think we really just took all we learned in practice and applied it to the game.”

Kays junior Jocelyn Sanchez got the scoring started, scoring on a penalty kick due to a handball by Oak Forest freshman Riley Carone in the box with 36:17 left in the first half. The Bengals would answer with 30:26 to go with freshman Alexa Nava scoring her first of two goals on a penalty kick from a tripping foul in the box by Kays freshman Jasmine Torres.

Oak Forest would score the rest of its goals in the first half. The go ahead goal was a cross pass from Carone to junior Rebecca Yarkes with 18:50 to go and the insurance goal came from an Everitt throw in to Nava with 16:10 to go to bring the score to 3-1. Being a freshman in these situations isn’t easy, but Nava was able to remain composed and help her team when needed.

“It feels nice,” Nava said. “Knowing that I helped my team win the regional and me being a freshman, achieving this in my first year of high school, it’s very, very nice.”

The second half had nothing to show for with goals, but it had everything to show with grit. Oak Forest kept the pressure on Kankakee and continued to make it tough on the Kays to get anything going offensively from start to end

“We came out [to start the game] very passive,” Kays head coach Vincent Mkhwanazi said. “And the score does show that.”

Oak Forest now awaits a sectional semifinal matchup against Burbank St. Laurence, a team it lost 3-1 to in mid-April. DaLuga believes that a revenge game is coming the Bengals’ way Tuesday at 6:30 pm at Kankakee.

“We’re looking for a little revenge game for them,” he said. “We lost to them, a tight one earlier in the season, so we’re looking to keep [the positives] going.”

For Kankakee, its quest for back-to-back regional titles for the first time in school history came up short, and it does lose two valuable seniors to its roster in goalie Ana Lopez and forward Alexsandria Quintanar. But after winning their first-ever regional title last year, they won their first-ever Southland Athletic Conference title this season, giving them two straight 17-win seasons. With almost a lineup full of returners slated for 2026, the Kays’ expectations of success are expected to continue.

“The future’s looking bright,” Mkhwanazi said. “In terms of expectation, it’s good to know that we’ve made this a norm. There is that expectation of anticipation of winning. So that is I think program wise, I think that that’s a huge step forward.”