Brandon Yunker’s goal is winner as Batavia tips Benet

You can learn a lot from a dummy.

Batavia earned a berth in the Class 3A Bolingbrook Sectional championship game when it beat Benet 3-1 with one on Wednesday.

The score was tied 1-1 when Erik Faessler sent a diagonal ball toward teammate Kevin Collins just inside the Benet penalty area.

With the defense collapsing toward him, Collins passed up an open shot and dummied — let the ball go through — toward fellow senior Brandon Yunker, who snuck in behind the defense and buried a six-yard shot for the go-ahead goal with 10:05 left in the second half.

“We work on that in practice all the time,” Yunker said. “We always try to switch it across, play the dummy and then just have that back post run open all day. Then it’s just touch and finish. It’s easy.”

The goal was Yunker’s second of the season and the first game-winner of his prep career.

“It’s really good to see it come through in the end,” Yunker said. “I figured if I was going to put two away all season, I’d rather have one then.”

Collins scored the other goals for Batavia (19-3-2), which will play Naperville North (15-4-3) in Saturday’s sectional final.

The first came on a header off an Ian Larson corner kick and tied the game with 9:10 to go in the first half. The second came on a breakaway from midfield and iced the game with 2:47 remaining.

But it was the shot he passed up that will go down in Batavia lore.

“Faessler sent the ball in and I took a quick look over my shoulder to see if anyone was there and I heard Brandon yell ‘cross,’ ” Collins said. “I just saw him right over my shoulder, so I…shielded the ball off.

“I could have taken a touch and shot, but I thought the better option since we work on it in practice all the time was to take the dummy and give my teammate a chance.”

Benet looked like it had a good chance to reach the sectional final for the first time since 2006 when Daniel Morefield volleyed home a pass from Andrew Heaton at the 28:30 mark of the first half.

But the Bulldogs switched to a 3-4-3 formation shortly after in an attempt to boost their offense. The risky gamble paid off.

“We saw some things with Benet and how they were playing and we definitely wanted to put more pressure on them up top,” Batavia coach Mark Gianfrancesco said. “It put us a little bit under pressure with [Kyle Kenagy], at times but we were pressuring the ball up higher so he didn’t see as many opportunities, I didn’t think, when he was in there.”

Kenagy scored a minute later but it was called for being offsides on the play. The Benet forward had just one shot after that and was knocked out of the game when he suffered a mild concussion while being fouled with 21:36 to go in the second half.

“That was unfortunate,” Gianfrancesco said. “We want to play against the best, win lose or draw. You never want to see anybody go out, especially for their last game.”

Kenagy is one of three Illinois players selected to play in the High School All-American Game on Dec. 14 in Raleigh, N.C., but he wasn’t focused on that.

“It still feels pretty bad losing this game,” Kenagy said. “It’s obviously disappointing, but I would say it’s an honor to play with this group of kids and it’s just a shame to go out the way we did, playing so hard.”