Junior forward Zach El Metennani scored two goals to power the Oak Park and River Forest High School boys soccer team to a 3-0 win over East Aurora on Thursday night. The Huskies notched their second straight victory to improve their record to 5-4-1 on the year.
“It was great to get that second win in a row,” said El Metennani. “It’s a good thing to get back to a positive record and start that winning streak. Every home game gives a lot of momentum to our team. It’s a really positive thing.”
El Metennani got the scoring going early in the first half as he finished off a rebound from senior defenseman Quentin Drane’s shot after a corner kick.
“I was playing it off of the rebound,” he said. “I was in the right place at the right time on the rebound for both of my goals.”
El Metennani  scored again off the rebound after a hard shot by senior midfielder Joe Gullo. With 6:03 remaining in the game, junior midfielder Evan Kindler sealed the deal with a goal from the left side after the Huskies’ strong attack drove up the field.
The sustained offensive flurry was welcomed by the entire team.
“Sometimes we’ll score first and we’ll think, ‘Oh, 1-0 lead, let’s play defensively,'” OPRF senior defender Graham Nagle-Deamer said. “We have to start having the mentality of playing as if it’s 0-0 and keep fighting for another goal so we have more padding.”
Although the Huskies lost in the first round of the Pepsico Showdown, coach Paul Wright feels his team is getting on the right track with some of their toughest matchups on the horizon.
“This was our first game this season where we scored goals from the run of play,” Wright said. “We’ve scored a lot of goals before on set plays and rebounds, but now we attacked up the field. That was a really big plus for us.”
In the Huskies’ four losses this season, they had two games where they led by a goal and couldn’t finish the job. After its convincing win against East Aurora, the Huskies are focused on faster starts (like the East Aurora game) and improvement across the board.
“Our back four and our midfield are pretty strong, it’s just that we’ve had a lot of trouble staying on top,” Wright said. “We’re looking at a variety of combinations to get us to that next level. We can definitely build off of what we did tonight.”
The Huskies also dominated on their counter-attack against the Tomcats.
“The other thing we’re trying to do is try to counter-attack much faster and get the ball out to the wings,” Wright said. “That created a lot of opportunities for us in tonight’s game. It’s something we’ve worked on a lot in the last week and it’s really shown.”
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