Naperville North senior Cam Radeke isn’t one of those players who become mesmerized watching fellow forward Alex Barger work his magic on a soccer field.
That’s why he was ready when Barger launched a long pass over the defense from the left side of the midfield early in Tuesday’s showdown with crosstown rival Naperville Central.
Radeke got behind the defense, latched onto the ball and fired a shot that Naperville Central goalkeeper Dean Scott stopped from point-blank range.
Radeke, though, pounced on the rebound to open the scoring at the 27:26 mark of the first half. The Wright State commit later finished the scoring on a penalty kick to lift the visiting Huskies to a 2-0 DuPage Valley Conference victory at Memorial Stadium.
“That was a really good ball,” Radeke said of Barger’s pass. “Once I saw him look down at the ball and cock his foot back, I knew he was going to play that to me.
“I just tried to get on the end of it, got a good touch and ended up finishing it.”
Scott made a great reflex save on Radeke’s initial shot but couldn’t recover to Radeke’s cool reaction.
“He made a really good save at the beginning and I just recovered the ball back in,” Radeke said. “It was mainly reflexes. It was on my side (Tuesday).”
Radeke added a second goal on a penalty kick with 8:46 left in the second half, which ended up being a big insurance tally with Naperville Central (9-5, 2-1) pushing hard for the tying goal.
It was Radeke’s team-leading sixth goal of the season. Three have come against Naperville Central, which lost to Naperville North (9-2-2, 3-0) for the second time in 17 days.
“I thought Cam was fantastic,” Naperville North coach Jim Konrad said. “He was dangerous, and the other forwards did a good job of filling in and applying pressure and tracking runners.”
Yet Konrad was not happy with his team’s overall performance, especially in the midfield.
“Both teams left a lot of goals on the field,” Konrad said. “That game could have been 4-3 either way.
“Central put us under a ton of pressure. I’m super disappointed with the way we played in the midfield.”
As pleased as he was with the win, Radeke acknowledged the Huskies felt fortunate to win. The Redhawks misfired on three wide-open shots from inside of six yards.
“I think everyone felt that they easily could have scored a couple goals,” Radeke said of Naperville Central. “It definitely feels like they maybe should have won this game.
“We just need to play better all around.”
For the Redhawks, the loss was a letdown after having scored 19 goals in their previous three games, all victories.
Sophomore defender Patrick Bohan knows what Naperville Central needs to do.
“I think we played an overall pretty good game,” he said. “We just need to work on finishing our shots. We had a lot of really good opportunities, but we just couldn’t finish.
“We’ve got to keep working on it and hopefully we get to play them again in the playoffs.”
The Huskies now control their own destiny in the DVC race with games remaining against Metea Valley and Waubonsie Valley.
Konrad, however, wants to see improvement.
“We want to be competing at that top 10 level,” Konrad said. “I know that we’re winning games, but we got some breaks (Tuesday night) and were fortunate to win.
‘It was a great result, but it was not our best effort, so we’ve got to get better to wrap up the DVC.”
Matt Le Cren is a freelance reporter for the Naperville Sun.
