Boys Soccer: York holds off furious Lockport rally, advances to state championship game

HOFFMAN ESTATES – York dodged a resilient Lockport squad in the Class 3A state soccer semifinals on Friday night, surviving the Porters, 3-2.

The Dukes (22-2) advanced to Saturday’s state championship game where they will face Fremd, a 1-0 winner over Morton.

After Kevin Gliatis scored midway through the first half and Jose Herrera found the back of the net early in the second half, Kacper Janowski scored on a pass from Herrera to extend York’s lead to 3-0 with only 16:48 remaining.

“I was very proud of the guys for hopping on them and making sure we put the pressure on them,” York coach Jordan Stopka said. “You start to panic a little bit. It’s easy to panic when you’re in a situation like this. It’s pretty easy to be like ‘Ok, we got this,’ but you hear both crowds going back and forth chanting and it’s a little bit more difficult to stay in your lane and make sure you know what you’re doing.”

Obviously, Lockport’s chance to advance was fading now down 3-0 and under 17 minutes left, but the Porters didn’t see it that way, scoring twice in the next six minutes to seize momentum and pull within 3-2 with 10:55 still on the clock.

Talk about a turnaround.

“I think it’s a testament to these kids,” Lockport coach Chris Beal said. “They never give up. They don’t know when they’re beaten. They show their heart and their character and their tenacity and to fight against that adversity, they knew that they were down and people may think that it’s over, but they don’t believe that it’s over.”

The Porters (19-2-1) kept pushing and were finally rewarded with 12:31 left when Dominic Williams pounced on Dylan Vilcek’s shot off the crossbar that caromed toward his path.

They struck again about 90 second slater when Danny Jimenez lined a shot that Peyton Abdel-razik was able to get a touch on to help it find the back of the net with 10:55 still to play.

“It felt really good to put our team back in the game,” Abdel-razik said about his second goal of the year. “I’ve played with Danny for a while so I know he likes to get around the corner and take shots so I needed to get into the box and followed it and it just came across and I tapped it in.”

Suddenly, the Porters were alive.

“In the last 20 to 25 minutes we had that momentum,” Beal said. “We had a team that’s very technical, a skilled team, we had them pretty much limited to a long ball game.”

The Dukes had gotten away from keeping the ball on the ground and possessing but were able to regroup in time to sustain Lockport’s frantic rally.

“I think there were 5 to 7 minutes of panic there and I mean honestly it’s tough to control 11 people when there’s that much noise,” Stopka said. “They understood the game plan and when we get to fivce (minutes left) if you don’t have an obvious opportunity, kill the game in the corner and they did a good job of that.”

Gliatis got the Dukes on the board with 20:40 left in the first half on a header off of Yael Silvestri’s corner kick.

“(My defender) went a little too far and then I saw him jump,” Gliatis said. “The ball just slipped over his head and I smacked my head on the ball.”

Herrera displayed some flash after receiving a ball punched out his way from Janowski, scoring with 33:03 left in the game for a 2-0 lead.

York has never won a state title.

“It’s easy to set a high bar, it’s hard to get over it,” Stopka said. “I’m beyond ecstatic with these kids. We did have high aspirations.”

One more will take them even higher.