Bulldogs Soccer Rallies To Regional Championship

Ian Larson doesn't remember the last time Batavia won a boys soccer regional title.

How could he? He wasn't even born yet when the Bulldogs took home a championship in 1995.

Despite not being alive in '95, Larson was pivotal to the Bulldogs success in '11 on Saturday as they took home a regional championship trophy with a 2-1 victory over Waubonsie Valley in the Class 3A Waubonsie Valley regional.

After allowing a penalty kick goal in the game's first minute, Batavia shut out the Warriors the rest of the way while scoring a pair of second half goals to secure the victory. Larson assisted on both scores.

"It feels great," Larson said. "I couldn't have expected to do it. I went in there and got my opportunity and just did it."

Batavia (15-5-3) yielded a penalty kick goal to Sam Bell just 18 seconds into the game, but responded with several scoring chances throughout the first half, as well as the first 20 minutes of the second half before finally finding a way to bring home the equalizer.

"We've told ourselves the whole season if we go down we have the players so just keep our heads up and keep fighting," Batavia senior Anthony Torres said. "We had so many guys step up off the bench and guys that made a difference and that's where our goals came from."

As four-year players, Torres, Cody Witkowski and Lalo Cuautle have become synonymous with Batavia soccer in recent years, but it took the special contributions of Larson and Erick Ontiveros for the Bulldogs to pull even at 1-all.

Waubonsie Valley (9-8-3) surrendered the game-tying goal with 20:06 left in the second half when Larson put on a bit of a dribbling clinic as he worked his way from one of the corners toward the back end of the net before flipping a cross where Ontiveros converged and headed it past Warriors keeper Jordan Ward.

"We've got so many seniors and so many guys that want to step in and produce for the team," Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco said. "Erick got minimal time on Tuesday but stepped up today and when he got the opportunity he took advantage of it."

Momentum seemingly carried over to the Bulldogs after knotting the score at 1-all, and they used that to their advantage when they pulled ahead on a Witkowski goal with just 12:21 left on the clock.

Larson lofted a perfect pass ahead of Witkowski, who ran it down, realized he had a great scoring opportunity right in front of him, and then finessed a shot up and over Ward to give the Bulldogs their first lead of the game.

"He won the ball and was looking to attack from there," Gianfrancesco said.  He recognizes that pretty well, and we've seen that all year where he flips it right in."

While the Batavia football team seems to be the sports talk of the town, the soccer team has also made quite the name for itself after winning the Upstate Eight River conference and now winning its first regional in 16 years. Perhaps that’s why so many football players were in attendance to support their classmates in Aurora.

"It feels so good," Witkowski said. "We didn't want this to be our last time playing together."

And it won't. The Bulldogs will now face Naperville Central on Tuesday in the Class 3A Naperville North sectional semifinals.