Boylan held down one of the state’s top goal scorers, Kendall Zanoni, during a 5-0 win over Harlem on Thursday, setting the stage for a feverish backstretch of the girls soccer regular season.
And then it will be time for an exciting postseason run.
Byron hammered Genoa-Kingston 5-0 on Tuesday night to secure the Big Northern Conference title as the postseason approaches. Both teams are 13-3-2 and 7-1 in league play, but the Tigers hold the head-to-head edge.
When it comes to the NIC-10 title, it all comes down to the final week.
And while the sectional seeds have already been released, these late-season wins and conference titles help build momentum for teams looking for strong runs in the playoffs.
“The girls are very excited for what’s coming up. They know what’s going on,” Belvidere North head coach Rick Mateus said. “We’ve got a lot of talent. But this conference has been strong this season. We’ll have to see if we can finish it off.”
Belvidere North is the last team with an undefeated NIC-10 record.
And while Zanoni and Harlem (10-6-1, 3-5 NIC-10) are out of it, the Huskies can still disrupt the conference-title race. It will all come down to Belvidere North (11-1-1, 8-0), Boylan (12-5-1, 7-1) and Guilford (15-2-1, 7-1), and North has already defeated Boylan and Guilford and won’t have to face them down the stretch.
But Harlem is at North at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Blue Thunder’s last and only regular-season game remaining. And Boylan is at Guilford on Thursday.
North is ranked No. 14 in the latest maxpreps.com girls soccer poll for Illinois, and is the only Rockford-area team on any of the polls.
Zanoni had 44 goals after 15 games, but has just one in the past two games, both losses, and is now tied for eighth in the state.
Soon it will be time to get ready for the postseason to kick in. That all starts on Saturday, May 16.
Jay Taft is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at jtaft@rrstar.com and sign up for the Rockford High School Sports Newsletter here at rrstar.com. Jay has covered a variety of sports, from the Chicago Bears and Blackhawks to local youth sports, since the turn of the century at the Register Star.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Belvidere North girls soccer one win from NIC-10 title
Reporting by Jay Taft, Rockford Register Star / Rockford Register Star
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