When the Barrington fans flooded the field Tuesday night following the Broncos’ 3-2 win over Palatine to capture their own soccer sectional championship, Justin Montrie was handed a small blue T-shirt.
Fittingly, it had Superman’s logo emblazoned across the front.
The junior forward scored his first hat trick of the season, pushing his season scoring total to 19 with three second-half goals.
The No. 8 Broncos (19-5-2) will next meet Granite City, which defeated Belleville East 4-3 in the Granite City sectional final, while the No. 6 Pirates finished the season at 22-3.
“I knew that if I didn’t step up someone else would,” Montrie said. “This was my turn to get the job done. This was amazing.”
Montrie opened the scoring at 36:48 of the second half off an assist from Ben Dyon. Barrington pushed it to 2-0 at 25:45 when Montrie tapped home a Kenny Kline shot that Palatine goalie Richard Nassif (10 saves) couldn’t contain.
Palatine’s Ryan Congalton scored at 13:44, cutting it to 2-1, but Montrie answered with a header five minutes later.
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Josh Wittenberg scored Palatine’s final goal with 6:06 remaining.
“Any playoff game that you give up three goals, you don’t deserve to win,” Palatine coach Willie Filian said (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text). “They deserve to go on.”
— Ross Forman.
At Lyons: Justin Kozak scored twice and assisted one of Cupertino Enriquez’s two goals as No. 2 Morton (21-0-3) routed Kelly 5-1. Tommy Garcia opened the scoring on a penalty kick 16:27 into game.
Kelly (13-6-2) trailed 4-0 before Rene Diaz tallied midway through the second half.
At Glenbrook North: Troy Nightingale’s second-half goal lifted No. 3 Evanston (19-1-8) past Glenbrook South 1-0.
At Maine East: Bryan Dahlquist netted two goals and added three assists for No. 4 Conant, which flew past Schaumburg 8-1.
Kevin Swanson scored the first two goals for the Cougars (20-3), who jumped out to a 5-0 halftime lead. Justin Kwiatkowski added a goal and assist while Kevin Harte had four saves.
Schaumburg (11-11-1) had its six-game win streak snapped.
Naperville North: The host Huskies (16-7) upset No. 5 Benet 3-2 behind Nick Romano’s deciding goal early in the second half. Anthony Szymel made four second-half saves to preserve the win.
Benet (18-3-2) jumped out to an early lead on Matt Soldato’s goal less than four minutes into the game. But Joe Sauerman and Adrian Skital each responded with a goal to give North a 2-1 advantage before Ben Aguilar evened it up 2-2 for Benet 26 seconds before the half.
“I was afraid when [Benet] got that one goal so fast that we might let it get away from us,” Naperville North coach Dave Bucher said. “They were so intense those first 15 minutes.”
At Rockford Boylan: Rockford Guilford (19-2-3) blanked West Aurora 3-0 as Jon Zabikow, Eric Conklin and Brad Ring each scored in the first half.
The Blackhawks, who finished the season at 16-10-1, managed only three shots on goal.