By Mark Gregory
Plainfield Central will enter the IHSA Class 4A playoffs as the No. 15 seed in the Bolingbrook Sectional and compete with No. 18 Plainfield South in the Geneva Regional, coach Kevin Fitzgerald is hoping the team is playing hard the entire game.
“We started slow, we went on a little bit of a hot streak and we are back to where we started,” he said. “We took one step forward, two steps back. We are trying to get them to play hard for 80 minutes – that is still the goal. We didn’t get a good seed, but we probably got what we deserved. In our sectional it honestly doesn’t matter, whoever you play, you will play someone good. Whoever it is, if we want to play, we will compete and have a chance and if we don’t want to play, they will all beat us.”
The Wildcats showed recently that they can play hard in spurts as shown when they were down 3-0 to Joliet West with 10 minutes remaining in the game and finished with a 3-2 loss.
“This is not the first game I told them that imagine what would happen if everyone played hard the entire game,” Fitzgerald said. “Nothing else matters until we do that.”
What is more frustrating to Fitzgerald is the fact that he sees talent on the field.
“Talent is not our problem, we have enough,” he said. “We have won more games with less talent without a doubt. Talent is not our problem – mentality is our problem. It is just whether or not we feel like playing and that is something we have to fix. We have to keep trying.
“We have some kids that know how to play soccer and we have kids that can play hard sometimes. We have thought about formations and switching guys to different spots but none of that matters unless we play hard and together – which is something else we are trying to do. The goals are very basic right now. If you play hard and do what we ask you to do, you will be on the field. We are going to keep searching for answers because we keep getting the wrong ones.”