Saints Outlast Bulldog Booters

In recent years, St. Charles East's boys soccer team has traditionally opened its season with a nonconference match against neighboring Tri-Cities rival Batavia.

Now that the two teams are Upstate Eight Conference River Division rivals, the game has been pushed back a couple of weeks but that did little to diminish the intensity level displayed by both teams during their showdown Saturday at Norris Stadium.

St. Charles East (5-3) held off the visiting Bulldogs (2-1) in what was a very spirited, emotional and sometimes physical match.

"It's always the same against a local rival," said Saints coach Paul Jennison, whose club improved to 2-0 in conference play. "Sometimes the playbook goes out the window."

Jennison wasn't overly thrilled by his team's overall play but he left the field satisfied with the end result.

"The passion was certainly there, but I'll be honest, our quality wasn't. I thought that the last two years Batavia has controlled the midfield and we knew that they would try to do the same thing again.

"We couldn't seem to stop them but the one thing that we couldn't do last year was win, so for that I'm very happy."

Saints senior midfielder Jonny Bren tallied the only goal of the first half on a header off a corner kick.

The score remained the same until the 64th minute when junior forward Ethan Jendrzejczyk's perseverance paid off.

Jendrzejczyk delivered a shot that caromed off the crossbar, and Bren kept the ball alive in front of the Bulldogs' keeper before Jendrzejczyk sent a point-blank blast into the back of the net for a 2-0 Saints' lead.

"I've been trying to score a lot and it hasn't been working but finally I put one in," Jendrzejczyk said of his third goal of the season.

The Saints also received solid goalkeeping from Nick Novotny and Eric Meesenburg, highlighted by Meesenburg's spectacular off-balance save midway through the second half.

"I'm proud of both of them," Jennison said. "A lot of people said that after we lost Charlie (Lyon, a graduated keeper) we'd struggle in goal but both of them have stepped up and have been fantastic.

"To be fair, our best two players out there today were our goalkeepers."