Chesterton senior girls soccer superstar Adey Avey scores a hat trick of goals in the second half against a Lake Central team that had not given up more than one goal in a game, leads team to 3-2 win

Tom Keegan
Onwardtrojans.com

Lake Central’s girls soccer team arrived at Chesterton Stadium on Tuesday night with a well-earned reputation for defensive excellence, never having allowed more than one goal in a game, 10 games into the season.
Even Ripley would have a difficult time believing this one, but it’s true: Chesterton senior striker Adey Avey executed a hat trick, all three goals coming in the final 30 minutes to lead the Trojans to a 3-2 victory.
Avey scored as many goals in less than a half than LC, No. 13 in the state 3A rankings, had allowed in regulation in its first 10 matches, six of them victories on shutouts. Even mighty Crown Point needed overtime to break a scoreless tie against its neighbor from St. John.
The win moved Chesterton into second place in the DAC standings, one game behind the Bulldogs.
But this night was about more than standings. It was about a determined soccer virtuoso finding a way to so quickly get the lead back every time it vanished. If only the late poet Rudyard Kipling had been there to see it because Avey found a way to keep her head when all about her were losing theirs (especially parents from both sides offering unsolicited opinions on game officials, a bad sound and a bad look).
In one of those counterintuitive twists that sporting events so often seem to present, Avey shared the ball more in the second half than the first and had three goals to show for it.
After a scoreless first half, Avey, a driven athlete skilled at thinking quickly on the fly and making her body do what her mind commands, found the net on an assist from Campbell Gingrich.
Avey explained how it happened: “I told Campbell to just head it up because I was standing there and I knew a girl was on my back, so as soon as she headed it I just chested it. I took another touch, and I just hit it. I tried to go low to the corner.”
Tried and succeeded.
The way the game was going to that point, it looked as though that might stand up as the game-winner, but the fireworks were just beginning.
Lake Central tied it and Avey gave the Trojans a 2-1 lead on a goal assisted by Eva Montes. Guarded tightly on the play as she was all night, Avey found a way to score by blasting away with her left foot.
“The great players add something. She never really had as good a shot as she has now from outside the box, let alone the left-footed one,” Trojans coach Ben Forgey said. “That’s not the only goal she’s scored from distance with her left foot this year. Imagine that. Try stopping her on the dribble, you do that so she can pull a shot with her right foot from distance. So, you stop that, and she can still score from distance with her left foot. Good luck.”
LC again wasted no time tying the score, making it 2-2 with 3:13 left.
Time to see how much gas Avey had left in her tank. Enough to draw a foul in the box and enough to be the one to take the penalty kick, even though she confessed afterward that she was hoping someone would volunteer to relieve her of that pressure.
Midfielder Claire Vrahoretis, whose penalty kick won Saturday’s 1-0 contest vs. Mishawaka Marian, the No. 1 team in the state 2A rankings, failed to score on a penalty kick earlier in the half vs. LC, which scored one of its goals on a penalty kick.
“I was really scared. Claire missed her first one and I knew she didn’t want to take it because she stood there looking at me. I saw her from the 50-yard line staring at me and I was like, ‘OK, I guess I will,’” Avey recounted. “So, I set it down and I looked over at Campbell and I go, ‘Do you want to take this?’ She said, ‘No.’ I was like, ‘(Shoot), I don’t want to do this.’ I said that out loud. The ref looked at me like, ‘Are you crazy?’ I just put my head down and hit it as hard as I can, trying to go low. It went mid. I was so scared if I missed. I felt for Claire when she missed, but I’m really proud of her for picking her head up.”
Avey made the game-winner with 1:51 left on the clock.
As long as she brought up Vrahoeretis’ head, it’s worth mentioning that she has become so skilled executing headers that she now sometimes sets up in a way to make the defender think she’s going there with the ball, but hits it elsewhere, giving new meaning to the term “head fake.”
“Claire’s insane with the headers,” Avey said.
Avey, Montes and Vrahoretis deserve credit for more than what they bring the team in terms of production, which is plenty.
They also had a role in making sure that the rough first half of a brutal four-game stretch that featured consecutive losses to Carmel and Crown Point by a combined 12-0 score didn’t crack the team’s foundation.
That does not go unnoticed by a coach who appreciates the maturity shown by his most experienced players.
“It’s a great group of seniors and it’s a great group overall because you can tell the seniors are playing for the love of the game and for the love of each other, and they’re playing so hard and they’re playing in the spirit that you’re supposed to play the game: hard, and competitive and caring about what they’re doing,” Forgey said. “And our younger players see that, and they just have no choice but to follow the seniors’ lead.”
Avey shared how she and classmates went about trying to ensure that the Carmel-Crown Point consecutive losses didn’t snowball into an avalanche.
“Our team chemistry is really good this year. All the seniors, we pushed everyone to forget about that game,” Avey said and shared the message they stressed with younger players. “That wasn’t us playing. That was one of our worst games. That’s not going to be our downfall. We’re just going to pick back up.”
And that’s what they did, knocking off Marian and LC in a four-day span.
The DAC is such that the gap between the haves and have nots most seasons is split right down the middle of the eight-school conference. The haves: rivals Chesterton and Valparaiso from Porter County, and rivals Crown Point and Lake Central from Lake County.
A year ago, the Trojans went 0-4 against the haves, including a 2-1 loss to Valpo in sectional. They were outscored 8-2 in the four games and Avey went scoreless.
This season, the Trojans are 2-1 against the trio and Avey has five goals in the games.
Better ball movement in the second half, brought out the beast in Avey.
“As you could see in the first half, it was two really good teams that kind of neutralized each other,” Forgey said. “But if we don’t share the ball, if we don’t all play together … In the second half we have the special players and the role players and the good players, they all worked together, and you can see the difference: zero goals in the first half, three in the second half. Sure, they all came from Adey, but she couldn’t have done it by herself. She shared the ball more; we shared the ball more, and we were able to capitalize because we all were in it together.”
Avey has a had several big nights for Chesterton, but this one seemed to mean more to her because of the quality of the opponent.
“He’s a really good coach,” Avey said of Jereme Rainwater. “And I have a lot of respect for the Lake Central girls. Some of them are my teammates on club.”
Rainwater, in the first season of adding girls head coach to his responsibilities to the one he already had in heading the boys program, faces Chesterton again tonight in a boys game in St. John.
Chesterton’s girls (9-3 overall, 5-1 in the DAC) team resumes its schedule Thursday at Bishop Noll at 6:30 p.m, then is at Northridge on Saturday afternoon. The Trojans complete their regular season with a pair of home games, Sep. 30 vs. Portage and Oct. 2 vs. Hanover Central.
The Trojans then will compete in the Hobart sectional that also includes Merrillville, Portage and Valparaiso. The sectional pairing show on IHSAAtv.org for boys and girls soccer is scheduled for Sunday at 5 p.m.