Crown Point Invite 2007

NorthWood came away with a 1-1 record from the Crown Point Invite. The first challenge of the day was finding the field. The short buses pulled into the parking lot less then 10 minutes before kickoff. In the first game the Panthers played the Wheeler Bearcats (or was it Hub Caps) who came into the tourney with a 2-1-1 record. A slow start by NW resulted in a 0-2 deficit before the half. Ben "Chia" St. Germain scored a great goal off a cross in the box. The referee however needed to show that the bribe given to him from Wheeler needed to be paid off and therefore disallowed the goal. When questioned by coach Dijkstra, the referee said that all calls will even out, apparently referring to himself as a screwup and that he was confident he would screw up again within the same game. And he did, too bad it was another bad call against NorthWood. Edgar Villegas was leveled inside the 18 by a Wheeler midfielder but the ref kept the whistle in his pocket. NorthWood did play an energetic first part of the second half, scoring twice and tying the game only to give up one to Wheeler with just a few minutes left in the game. The end result 3-2, meant that NorthWood went into the looser bracket of the tournament.

The afternoon game was a matchup with Gavit High School from Hammond. The "purple nurples" had lost the morning session with 10-0 to Crown Point. NorthWood scored four (!) quick goals in 19 minutes, all of them involving Edgar Villegas (2 goals and 2 assists). An injured Seth "Ducky" Douwsma scored the other 2 goals. Ryan "Smalls" Lincoln sat this one out due to the fact that his medical release did not accompany him on the trip, Justin "BB" Chupp stayed on the bench due to a lower leg injury. All other players were able to get into the game, with Cam "red mop" Seitz, Daniel "pincher" Villa, Ben "Deuce" Dijkstra and back up GK Michael Balogh getting considerable playing time. Gavit scored once off a cross/shot from the right to make the final 4-1. Robbie "Thumper" Balogh was able to crush one of the men in purple but was unable to convert the tackle into a yellow card. Brandon German had to leave the game after a hospital ball resulted in a Gavit player running his cleats up the inside of Brandon's upper leg. The final game of the tourney would have been a Concord-NorthWood matchup. It was however mutually agreed that with a looming conference game between the two schools coming up, the game would be canceled. After a 12 hour day, a win and a loss, a visit to Quiznos and some excellent driving by the bus drivers, the team pulled into the parking lot at the High School. NorthWood has a busy and very important week ahead; the varsity will play Warsaw, Goshen and Riley while the JV will face Warsaw, Goshen and will finish the week playing in the Goshen NLC JV Tourney.