St. Charles North, St. Charles East settle for tie in Tri-Cities Night showdown

ST. CHARLES – Round 2 of the crosstown rivalry between St. Charles North and St. Charles East was a bit different from the initial rendition.

After the first matchup ended in a 3-0 victory for the Saints, the North Stars pushed the pace with an early goal, while the Saints responded with a goal late in the second half to force a 1-1 tie in the second game of Tri-Cities Night.

“In a game where you have the lead early, you’d like to come away with a win,” North Stars coach Brian Harks said. “But the amount of growth that we’ve showed over the season from the last time we played them to this game, I thought it was spectacular. Every player on the field worked their butts off.”

The North Stars (5-4-3, 1-1-2) controlled the ball for the majority of the first half and proved it with an early goal after junior Kaitlyn Nudera snuck past the Saints’ defenders and placed the ball into the back of the net just nine minutes into the contest.

“Obviously it was an amazing feeling,” said Nudera, whose goal was her first of the season. “But what made it so special was how our team went so hard off the bat to make that happen. If we didn’t fight that hard in the beginning, it would have never happened.”

The early goal was one of a few changes the team had made since their first bout with the Saints back on March 29. The North Stars also switched up their field formation in order to better contain Saints freshman Mya Leon, who scored a hat trick in the last match, by putting sophomore Aubri Magana on her the entire way.

“Aubri played excellent defense and did her job perfectly,” Harks said. “St. Charles East is loaded up top and finds the net regularly, but our defensive line really played well supporting one another and helping each other out.”

The game plan worked all the way up to the 65th minute of the game, when Leon managed to worm her way through the North Stars defenders and loft a ball over the goalkeeper’s head and into the net to make it 1-1.

“When I saw the ball, I knew I just had to score,” said Leon, who now has 30 goals on the season for the Saints. “I saw the opportunity, and I took it, and it felt amazing when I did it.”

The Saints (14-2-2, 2-0-1) struggled out of the gate to respond to the North Stars’ changes on the pitch. But coach Vince DiNuzzo said while it’s not the result he wanted, the match showed the team’s ability to respond while behind.

“We’re not going to make excuses for ourselves, we have to be better than what we did in that first half,” DiNuzzo said. “But they responded well in that second half, and we played much better. I just wish there were a couple more minutes on the clock, because we definitely had some momentum at the end.”