HP101719

36 | October 17, 2019 | The highland park landmark sports
hplandmarkdaily.com
This Week In …
GIANTS VARSITY
ATHLETICS
FOOTBALL
■Oct. ■ 18 - hosts Deerfield,
7 p.m.
Field Hockey
Giants get wake-up call in regular-season finale
Nick Frazier, Sports Editor
6
BOYS SOCCER
■Oct. ■ 17 - hosts Lane Tech,
4:45 p.m.
■Oct. ■ 19 - IHSA Regional,
12 p.m.
GIRLS VOLLEYBALL
■Oct. ■ 17 - at Niles North,
6 p.m.
■Oct. ■ 21 - at Loyola, 6 p.m.
■Oct. ■ 22 - hosts Deerfield,
6 p.m.
GIRLS TENNIS
■Oct. ■ 18 - IHSA Sectional,
1 p.m.
GIRLS SWIMMING &
DIVING
■Oct. ■ 18 - at Deerfield, 5
p.m.
■Oct. ■ 19 - invitational at
Maine South, 11 a.m.
BOYS ICE HOCKEY
■Oct. ■ 23 - at Evanston, 8
p.m.
FIELD HOCKEY
■Oct. ■ 19 - playoffs, TBD
GIRLS GOLF
■Oct. ■ 19 - IHSA state
championship, TBD
GIRLS CROSS-COUNTRY
■Oct. ■ 19 - CSL Invitational
at Glenbrook South, 8:30
a.m.
BOYS CROSS-COUNTRY
■Oct. ■ 19 - CSL Invitational
at Glenbrook South, 8:30
a.m.
■Oct. ■ 22 - invitational at
Prospect, 4:30 p.m.
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online
at www.
hplandmark
daily.com
Highland Park coach
Joe Achino hopes his
team’s final regular season
game will help them in the
long run.
The Giants fell 1-0 to
Evanston on Thursday,
Oct. 10, at Wolters Field,
giving Highland Park a
10-7 record as it prepares
for the postseason. The
Wildkits scored late in the
first half, and the Giants
couldn’t recover.
“We just got outworked
tonight,” Achino said.
“Evanston did a great job,
they’re much improved
from years past, they
worked hard. The ball
bounces the way of the
team that’s working really
hard and they did, they got
that goal and that was it,
they protected the lead and
did a nice job.”
The first 20 minutes
of play were quiet, until
Highland Park earned the
first penalty corner of the
game at the 19:19 mark of
the opening half.
The Giants couldn’t
capitalize, and Evanston
earned back-to-back penalties
a few minutes later.
Though Highland Park
kept the ball out of its net
in the first penalty, they
couldn’t for the second
one, and the Wildcats took
a 1-0 lead with 6:49 left in
the half.
Highland Park earned
one more penalty corner
later in the half, but were
unable to convert.
The second half was
more of the same, as the
Giants struggled to create
scoring chances. Their
best opportunity 12 minutes
into the half, but the
ball was knocked out of
mid-air by the Evanston
goalie.
Ella Kaplan sends the ball downfield in the Giants 1-0 loss to Evanston on Thursday, Oct. 10., at Wolters Field. Nick
Frazier/22nd Century Media
Maddie Gordon, Ella
Kaplan and Kate Saunders
played well against the
Wildcats.
“Those three have continually
worked hard all
year from start to finish,”
Achino said. “They play
the whole game, they work
hard, and they’re trying to
set a trend for the rest of
the program.”
Achino says Thursday’s
game featured a different
Highland Park team
than the one that won 10
of 12 games in the middle
of the season. The Giants’
two losses in that stretch
were to Glenbrook South
and Loyola, two of the top
programs in the state. Both
losses were 1-0 affairs.
The Giants have had
great efforts and tough
losses all season, and
Achino believes the loss
to Evanston will serve as a
wake-up call for a program
still searching for its firstever
postseason win.
“This is a good wake-up
call, the last week or two
we have not been playing
up to what we had been at
the beginning of the year,
and I think it’s better now
than next week or the first
round of the playoffs,”
Achino said. “Definitely a
wake-up call.”
The skill is there on the
Giants’ roster, now the
team needs to outwork its
opponents to get that first
playoff victory. Playoff
seeding will likely come
out next week.
“When you don’t work
as hard as the other team
your skill levels out a little
bit,” Achino said. “We’ve
seen that when we’ve
come out and outwork
Hannah Frazer follows the Wildkits forward.
teams, our skill is really
elevated. We did a lot of
things tonight that I’m not
use to seeing, so the skill
is there, it’s just trying to
figure a few things out and
make sure that the work
ethic is there with it.”