All soccer teams want to score at a higher rate, and with the boys’ high school season now three weeks old, Wheaton North needs scoring sooner than later.
The Falcons (1-5-1) lost 1-0 to Leyden (3-2-2) on Saturday, getting shut out for the third time in the last four games.
“We show good 10-minute bursts but then we kind of lose energy in the attack,” Falcons coach Bryce Cann said. “Today I thought we attacked well at the start of the game, and then again for about 10 minutes to start the second half.
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“We need to sustain that energy and figure out how to find that final pass to a good look on net. We’ll just keep working on it in practice. The season is three weeks old and we have to sort things out in the final third.”
The Falcons played with a makeshift lineup defensively due to injury and absence against Leyden. “We were rotating guys through but we still did a decent job of keeping things manageable,” Cann said. “And Collin is going to make some saves for us.”
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In senior Collin Schmid, the Falcons have a keeper they can be confident in, and while Schmid likewise has confidence in his defenders he’d like to see his side improve in an area that stung them on Saturday.
“Restarts,” Shmid said.
It was a Leyden corner kick taken in the second half that led to the Falcons’ doom. The Eagles’ Fernando Camacho took the restart and teammate Krystian Drozdz elevated near the Wheaton North goalmouth.
Drozdz’s head shot curled up and then under the crossbar for the game’s lone goal.
“We’ve given up a goal on a corner kick in each of our last three games,” Schmid said. “We have to do a better job of marking on those plays.
“I’m very, very confident in my defense but not as confident in the way we’re defending restarts. But (Drozdz) hit a great shot. It came off his head perfectly and it had so much spin on it that it caught me off guard.”
“The bottom line is we’re not making that last touch, that last pass, to a dangerous (scoring) opportunity,” Cann said. “And we have to play with urgency in the attack for more than ten minutes. It’s frustrating that it’s still an issue, and we need to sort it out in a hurry.
“I liked the first ten minutes of each half and I want to see us replicate that over the course of two halves. We need to find a way to keep it going for forty minutes, regroup at the half, and then go at it for another forty.”
