Girls Soccer: Jasmin Carrera powers Lane to regional title

Updated: May 18, 2012 9:30PM

Lane star Jasmin Carrera scored two second-half goals to lead the Indians to a 3-1 win over Evanston in Friday night’s Class 3A Evanston Regional Final.

The junior, who now has 42 strikes on the season, broke a 1-1 tie when she fired in from the top of the box five minutes into the second half.

Twenty minutes later, Carrera received a pass from freshman midfielder Anastasia Niforos, turned her defender and slid the ball past the Evanston goalkeeper.

Lane (17-5-1) advanced to Tuesday’s Niles North Sectional semifinal where it is scheduled to meet either No. 2 New Trier or No. 7 Maine West

Though Carrera scored the goals, it was Lane’s three-pronged attack of her, Niforos and junior Leslie Rueda that caused problems for the Wildkits all evening.

“When I get those three working together, we’re pretty dangerous,” Lane coach Mike Wasielewski said.

Lane opened the scoring nine minutes into the game when freshman midfielder Sophia Pavon connected on a free kick from just outside the 18-yard box.

Evanston, which had a goal waved off for a foul early in the contest, equalized in the 25th minute when leading scorer Anna Sippel, a senior, headed in a Ryan Berkley corner at the near post.

Carrera actually had the ball in the net two minutes later, but the goal was negated by an offside call.

Trailing 3-1, Evanston (8-12-4) had a few chances in the second half. With 11 minutes remaining, one of its shots was cleared off the line after a scramble in front of the net. Six minutes later, a defensive mix-up put an Evanston attacker through on goal, only for Lane defender Harper Albo to make an important intervention.

“We just got outplayed the whole game. We had a few opportunities, we just didn’t finish on any of them,” Evanston head coach Tasha Nemo said. “We weren’t going to balls that we should have gone to, we weren’t winning headers that we should have won. Lane Tech wanted it more than we did and it showed the whole game.”

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