Lakes retains bragging rights

The streak was on the line Saturday morning.

And Lakes soccer coach Kevin Kullby made sure to remind his players before they even took the field at Grayslake North.

“Every time we play them, I always say, ‘They haven’t beaten us yet, and I don’t want this to be the first time,’” said Kullby, who got his wish.

Lakes maintained its dominance over Grayslake North by posting a 4-2 nonconference road win.

In the six years since Lakes and neighboring Grayslake North have been playing each other, the Knights have never been able to tag Lakes with a loss.

“There’s a rivalry there because some of the players from each team know each other (from middle school) and they play on the same club team,” Lakes senior midfielder Jonathan Stanley said. “We always come out on top, but (Grayslake North) always plays us tough.”

It was a story of tough defense early on as neither team was budging.

Lakes, which improves to 9-7-1, finally broke up the scoreless tie with a relative binge at the tail end of the first half.

Tommy Langbein and Stanley scored back-to-back goals in the final 90 seconds before halftime. It was Stanley’s 15th goal of the season.

“We didn’t start off very well but those 2 goals we got right before halftime were huge,” Kullby said. “They gave us some breathing room.”

But Grayslake North sent Lakes gasping for air by quickly and unexpectedly cutting that lead in half within the first minute of the second half. Midfielder Amaud Laroche-Bataille scored an unassisted goal to make the score 2-1.

“My teammates are great,” Laroche-Bataille said. “They opened up space for me and I put it in.

“We played hard, but we had five or six minutes of letdown and that’s when (Lakes) scored their goals.”

Grayslake North (7-10) had one of those lapses late in the second half.

Trevor Ray scored a goal for the Eagles with 14:53 left. Then Langbein scored his second goal off a header just three minutes later to give Lakes a commanding 4-1 lead. Both of Langbein’s goals came off of assists from Scott Brugioni, who now has 15 assists on the season.

“We’re working on our mental strength,” said Grayslake North coach Adam DeCaluwe, whose team has certainly been tested with 10 games this season that have been decided by a single goal. “When Lakes put those two goals in over the last minute of the first half, we kind of dropped our heads.

“Each time we’ve lapsed, teams have been able to capitalize on it. It’s those little mistakes and they snowball. We’ve shown the ability to play tough defense and the ability to score, but we’ve got to do everything together.”

Grayslake North was able to cut its deficit in half again on a header by Carson Klarck with 10:03 remaining. But Lakes goalie Will Hill clamped down and the Knights weren’t able to seriously threaten again.

Hill finished with 6 saves for the Eagles while Grayslake North goalie Stevie Streeter had 10 saves.

“It was important for us to win this game,” Stanley said. “We had a tough loss (Friday night) against Deerfield, which should be one of the best teams in our sectional. It was important for us to bounce back.”

And to maintain the streak.