The talk around the Ottawa boys soccer team lately has been around cashing in on chances around the net when they come around.

The Pirates did just that in Saturday’s match against rival Streator at Ottawa High School.

The hosts used a goal late in the opening half to take the lead for good, then added another tally nearly midway through the second half to record a 2-0 victory over the Bulldogs.

“It’s always a good matchup when we play Streator, they are always ready to play and play at a high level,” Ottawa coach Kevin Olesen siad, his squad now 8-4 on the season. “Today was a true battle of the middle of the field. The midfielders on each side dictated the play and I thought we may have had a little bit of an edge there today. I also thought our defense did a pretty good job of limiting really good chances and Landry did a solid job in the net.

“I thought we possessed the ball well at times today, but it wasn’t as consistent as I would have liked it to be. We did a great job of finishing a couple times today which is something we’ve talked about having to do more of.

“This was a nice win and hopefully we can build off of it.”

With each side missing on a few chances in the first half, Ottawa finally broke through with 40 seconds remaining when freshman Luca Fernandez found the back of the net to make it 1-0 at halftime.

“Our coaches and players have talked about the fact that we’ve created a lot of chances offensively this season but how we have to finish,” Ottawa junior midfielder Alexio Fernandez said. “It’s been a focal point at the last few of our practices. We missed on a few pretty good chances today as well, but we also were able to take advantage of a couple too. I feel like we controlled the middle of the field for the most part today which was a big key.”

The Pirates were able to create a few chances in the second half, including with just over 25 minutes left when Luca Fernandez found Mauel Saucedo-Garcia streaking down the middle of the pitch. Saucedo-Garcia outraced a Streator defender to the ball and put a low 15-yard shot past keeper Colin Byers.

Byers made eight saves after replacing stater Seth Zito (five saves) at halftime.

Ottawa keeper Landry Brenbarger stopped 10 shots to record thew shutout.

“My guys are really grinding right now,” Streator coach J.T. Huey said, his club falling to 1-12 on the season. “We came into this season with a lot of inexperience, and we’ve taken our lumps a little bit, but these guys are starting to figure things out. I feel this was the first match this season where we played a complete match from defense, to midfield, to offense. The only thing we didn’t do was score.

“I felt like we were able to string passes together and created some opportunities throughout the match but just didn’t finish. We are stressing on working on one aspect of the game to get better in each match we play, we fix that and then move on to something else. We just have to keep working on getting better and hopefully we can take everything together come postseason time, which will be here before we know it.”

Both sides will be back in action on Monday with Ottawa traveling to take on Sycamore in an Interstate 8 Conference match, while Streator will be at home against Mendota.