Boylan knocks out Freeport, and Cortlyn Hefty and North stay alive in girls soccer as well

Freeport showed off its defensive prowess during Friday's Class 2A Freeport Regional final.

Boylan just showed its depth.

And it was the Titans' balance and depth that won out, though just barely in a 1-0 all-out battle.

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"Oh man, hat's off to Freeport, they sure took some notes from our last game, and they came to play," said Boylan (17-3-2) head coach Taylor Meyers, coaching her first game back after missing some time to have a baby. "We were slow to start and couldn't figure out how to break them down.

"But then we had a sophomore come in, Gianna McGraw, and she powered through and got a goal for us. That was all we needed."

McGraw, just brought up from the JV team for postseason, came in in the second half as part of Boylan's pretty constant rotation of players in and out. She then bullied her way through three Freeport defenders to pound a loose ball into the net with 25:52 left to play in the game.

It had been a scoreless battle, mostly on Boylan's side of the field, and Freeport's defense came up time and time again.

Led by hybrid defender Cadence Diduch, but without the program's all-time leading scorer Autumn Diduch out — she tore her ACL just before the postseason started — Freeport (9-6) hung tight with Boylan all night.

"We weren't going to let that happen to us again," Cadence Diduch said of the 5-0 loss the Pretzels suffered at the hands of Boylan just over two weeks ago. "We sure missed Autumn, that's for sure. But we can be proud of how hard we battled today."

But McGraw wasn't too be denied midway through the second half, and that was enough.

"None of us wanted to go into PKs; we wanted to finish this thing off," McGraw said of her first varsity goal. "I just gave it my all, and it wasn't pretty, but it felt amazing when I saw it went in."

What does it mean?

The Titans' win, along with Belvidere North's 4-0 victory over Dixon in another 2A regional final on Friday, kept alive the chances of another meeting between the top two teams in the NIC-10. Cortlyn Hefty is leading the state in goals scored, according to maxpreps.com, and Belvidere North is now 20-1 on the season.

"The girls are playing well, and they're doing what they have to," Belvidere North head coach Jeremy Naff said. "Today we took care of business."

After scoring one of North's four goals on Friday, Hefty has 67 goals on the year, sixth in the nation, and the Blue Thunder will next take on Burlington Central in Wednesday's Belvidere Sectional semifinal. A win in that one could mean another matchup with Boylan. Boylan faces Sycamore in the other sectional semifinal, theirs on Tuesday. North fell 3-2 to Boylan midway through the season, and that is the Blue Thunder's only loss on the season.

Jay Taft is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at jtaft@rrstar.com and follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @JayTaft . Sign up for the Rockford High School Sports Newsletter here at rrstar.com . Jay has covered a variety of sports, from the Chicago Bears and Blackhawks to local youth sports, since the turn of the century at the Register Star .

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Boylan knocks out Freeport, and Cortlyn Hefty and North stay alive in girls soccer as well