Hampshire bows out with lopsided loss

Updated: October 25, 2011 9:18PM

This is not at all what either Lakes or Hampshire were looking for when they took to the pitch in Lake Villa on Tuesday night in the semifinals of the Lakes Class 2A Soccer Sectional.

Lakes was looking for a challenge in its final tune-up before taking on state powerhouse Deerfield in Saturday morning’s sectional title matchup.

Hampshire was trying to show that it could play with the big boys in Class 2A after sharing the Fox Valley Fox title with Johnsburg and following that up with its third regional title in four years.

What the players, coaches and fans got instead was a total wipeout — a 7-0 Lakes victory that even required time to be run off the clock due to an IHSA rule that requires same whenever the goal spread reaches seven.

The game was over early, as in 31 seconds.

That’s how it took Lucas Istvanek to head in a cross from Scott Brugioni on the first shot of the game.

From there, the goals came with regularity for the Eagles, who tallied in the 14th, 15th and 25th minutes of the first half, and in the 55th, 71st and 80th after intermission.

“Everything went right for us today, right from the get-go,” said Lakes coach Kevin Kullby whose team will take a 13-9-1 record into Saturday’s match with Deerfield. “I thought Scott put a good ball in and Luke jumped on it to beat the goalie.

“Our game was very sharp. We pressured well …we defended well … we didn’t give them much. We were able to get everybody in the game, which doesn’t happen often at this stage.”

Hampshire coach John Gosling was understandably shell-shocked after the match ended.

“Today wasn’t us,” he said. “It’s not like their big guys had all the goals. Their role players got the goals, so that’s something to take away from this. We didn’t let their big guys score.”

Lakes’ big scorer is Jonathan Stanley, and he just had one assist.

Instead, Istvanek had a pair of tallies, Kyle Neeve scored on a PK, and Morgan Hannum scored on a rebound on a tally that was as controversial as you can get in a 7-0 game. The dispute over whether the ball crossed the goal line got Hampshire keeper Bryan Contreras yellow-carded and hooked for the rest of the game. Andy Pederson finished up.

Tom Langbeim, Joey Savino and Mark Gerrits also scored for the Eagles.

Hampshire (13-11 overall but 5-1 in the FVC) had four shots on goal, as Lakes keeper Will Hill was called on to make just one tough save.

“Coming in to the season, we knew we weren’t going to have the strongest record, losing all the seniors we did from last year,” said Gosling. “Going into the Fox Valley from the Big Northern, we knew we could be .500, but we had a thought looking at who we had that we had a good shot at the regional (title) again, and we did it.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t play our game tonight.”

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