For as much pressure as the Plainfield South Cougars boys soccer team was applying to the Streator Bulldogs for most of Tuesday evening’s nonconference meeting at Streator’s James Street Recreation Area, it took the visitors 37 minutes – and a fortunate bounce – to finally get on the scoreboard.

Xavier Martinez received a ricocheted line-drive pass from teammate Caden Pachowica right in front of the goal and sent it home to break a scoreless match just 3:05 before halftime. Plainfield South’s Manuel Mejia added a pair of highly-skilled second-half goals, and keeper Aldo Tamayo finished off a shutout with 12 saves in the Cougars’ 3-0 win over the host Bulldogs.

“A goal gives us confidence,” Mejia said. “Just seeing that, if we score a goal, then we’re going all out for whatever time’s left. Once we saw we could pierce their defense, we knew the next goals were bound to come.”

Plainfield South improves to 1-3 on the season.

Streator slips to 0-9.

“[Plainfield South] was a competitive team for us,” Streator coach J.T. Huey said, “and I think we rose up to that. Soccer’s a hard sport, because a 2-0 or 3-0 loss can look like a beatdown. But I felt like this was a pretty good battle both ways for probably 70% of the match. ...

“We’re not focused on record here. What we’re working on is improving one or two things every game, and starting last week, we’ve been doing that. ... Today we competed, and that’s what it is.”

In a match where Streator’s forwards and midfielders had trouble keeping up with Plainfield South’s physicality and speed, it fell upon the Bulldogs defense to keep the hosts in the match. They did so, too, keeping it a 0-0 game through 37 minutes, a 1-0 game through 56 minutes and a 2-0 contest through 76 minutes until Mejia split defenders with 3:53 remaining to close out the scoring.

“I think it was just effort at the end of the day,” Cougars assistant head coach Frank Thompson said. “Just having the guys compete and taking that into the second half.

“We saw [the] first half and knew what we had to fix, talked about it at halftime, and as soon as the second half started we did what we had to do, and effort overcame it all.”

It was Mejia’s first goal, though, that was the real showstopper, a fancy footwork sequence that made it 2-0 and gave the Cougars some breathing room not quite midway through the second half.

“I retrieved the ball from my teammate, saw some space in the middle, and then saw the defender’s hips were facing the other way,” Mejia said. “I caught him off balance, split the two defenders, saw the goalkeeper was more to the left side and slid it in to the bottom-right.”

While on one end the Streator defense – led by keeper Seth Zito’s 22 saves and standout defensive performances from both Joe Hoekstra and Keegan Gassman (non-goalie save) – was doing its best to hold down the fort, opportunities were few and far between on the other end of the pitch.

Mason Decker had a breakaway scoring chance late in the first half cross the face of the goal and fly left of the net, while Hoekstra didn’t get a solid strike on an open header right in front of the net in the second half that was probably Streator’s second-best scoring chance of the night.

“I’m not disappointed with this match,” Huey said. “I mean, losses are hard, especially when you have a string of them, but we’re building. Just keep battling, man. Keep battling.”

Shots on goal were 25-12 in favor of Plainfield South.