When Oak Park and River Forest boys soccer coach Paul Wright entered his team in the 32-team Pepsi Showdown, he had hope that his program would have an opportunity to grab some of the spotlight this fall.
That opportunity came on Saturday when the Huskies earned a quarterfinal berth to face New Trier at the Lyons Soccer Complex in LaGrange. The result, however, wasn’t the one Wright and Co. had hoped for, as they fell 3-0.
“I thought it was going to be an interesting match,” said Wright, whose team dropped to 4-2-2 with the loss. “My boys wanted this match for a long time.
“New Trier has a history of being the best at everything, but we gave them too much respect at the beginning of the game. We got beat down the right side three times in five minutes, and that’s how the goals came.”
The Huskies opened tournament play with an easy 6-0 victory over Marist. Ekerin Agboola, Liam Bird, Jacob Forman, Drew Golz, Pat Koller and Mark Schroeder tallied for OPRF. Mark Rosenberg’s first-half goal propelled Wright’s squad to a Sweet-16 win over Whitney Young.
“Mark Rosenberg and Pat Koller are starting to click in the middle,” Wright said. “Drew Golz and Mark Schroeder are still learning to read off of each other in the middle, but we’re improving in every area.”
With the Class AA sectional seeding meetings right around the corner, Wright likes where his team stands at the halfway point of the campaign.
“We’ll be ready for the playoffs,” Wright said. “In a sectional with teams like Hinsdale Central, Hinsdale South, Lyons, Morton, Farragut, York and Jaurez, it will not be an easy regional or sectional. The games actually look like they are easier in the supersectional, and that’s a shame.”
One area the Huskies have to get figured out before the postseason rolls around is in goal.
“The goalkeeping situation has been horrid,” Wright said. “We have rotated between three keepers because of injuries. It’s hard to get a stride when it keeps changing.”