Romeoville, Plainfield Central battle to a draw in Southwest Prairie Conference thriller

PLAINFIELD – Despite a mutually beneficial result Tuesday afternoon, the Romeoville and Plainfield Central boys soccer teams couldn’t have been feeling much different.

The visiting Spartans were content, even joyous. The Wildcats, on the other hand, seemed more disappointed than anything. It just goes to show that in soccer, ties are not always as equal as they appear to be.

That was the case Tuesday as Plainfield Central twice found itself in the lead, including with nine minutes to go. Each time, the Spartans managed to respond, including a penalty kick by Juan Camacho with eight minutes left to salvage a 2-2 draw at Plainfield Central High School.

As a result, both teams remained undefeated in the Southwest Prairie Conference. Romeoville is 15-4-3 overall with a 6-0-2 mark in conference, while the Wildcats are 15-0-3, including 7-0-1 in the SPC.

Romeoville coach Nick Cirrincione mentioned how impressed he was given that Plainfield Central was “probably pretty heavily favored” to win.

“We’re just excited to remain undefeated in conference,” Cirrincione said. “We wanted to see what we were made of. We left it all out on the field, and now we’ll go from there. ... We were the underdogs, so it was good to battle to a draw.”

On the flip side, Plainfield Central coach Kevin Fitzgerald expressed frustration that the Wildcats had to settle for the stalemate instead of coming away with a victory.

“It’s a bit disappointing, honestly,” he said. “We scored twice and one of our leads was pretty late. Giving it up both times makes it pretty tough to swallow. We’ve got a little adversity so maybe that’s a good thing for us. We’ll figure it out and see how well we respond against a really good team [Oswego East] on Thursday.”

The game couldn’t have been much more competitive in the first half. The two sides battled it out with both teams earning their chances. While the Wildcats held the advantage in time of possession, the score remained knotted up through the first 40 minutes as neither team could finish any of their opportunities.

The second half looked like it would be more of the same until the 49th minute.

That was when Finn Lambert managed to sneak the ball into the goal and give the Wildcats a 1-0 advantage. However, it was just 10 minutes later that the Spartans hit the equalizer as Kameron McShaw faked out the keeper to score an easy one to tie the score.

Nine minutes went by before Plainfield Central climbed back on top. Leo Perez managed to cross up a Spartan defender and kick a screamer of a goal to make it 2-1 with 12 minutes remaining.

Romeoville wouldn’t be denied, however, as Camacho was called up to take the PK with eight minutes to go and he converted it perfectly.

While he was happy to help his team out, he wasn’t as ecstatic about the final score.

“I was confident [I’d make the PK],” Camacho said. “We were all motivated. [Plainfield Central] was undefeated, so we came into this game with the mentality of, ‘We’ve got to win.’ I’m happy that we came out with a tie, but we could have definitely won that game.”

While Plainfield Central visits Oswego East on Thursday, Romeoville will host Oswego.

“We just have to be better,” Perez said. “We’ve been getting too cocky and haven’t been performing to our best. We just need more practice to get over our mistakes that we keep making.”