Last year, Minooka and Romeoville were in vastly different spots at this point of the boys soccer season.

Romeoville was 9-3-1 and in the midst of a typical fantastic season. This year, they entered Tuesday night’s road contest under .500 at 7-8.

Minooka, meanwhile, was in the middle of a season that never got off the ground, not winning a game until September 17th during a 1-5-4 start. This year, no one in the area had been better than them as they were unblemished at 10-0-0.

On the Indians’ senior night, it looked like both squads would be heading for their first draw of the season. Then, Minooka did what it’s managed to do all season: Win and win big.

After 57 scoreless minutes of action, the Indians scored four goals in the final 23 to take down the Spartans and continue their unblemished season with a 4-0 victory on senior night.

Minooka (11-0) managed to control the pace of the game throughout the entire first half, dominating in time of possession, but they simply weren’t able to get the ball in the back of the net. That theme continued in the second half until there were 23 minutes left on the clock.

Then came the avalanche.

“We just kept putting pressure on them,” coach Nate Spriggs said. “We knew if we just kept the ball and kept pressuring them we’d have opportunities to put the ball on frame. We did that, put the ball in and it was nice.”

The stands, press box and probably even the parking lots of Minooka had gone silent after 57 minutes of bloodless battle. That finally changed when Aldo Escobedo finally managed to squeeze the ball past Romeoville keeper Saul Garcia to give Minooka it’s first official advantage.

Leading scorer Andrew Calderon took the back seat on that goal, instead opting to pass it over to Escobedo. He did no such thing three minutes later when he sank the ball past Garcia. However, the ref blew the offsides whistle to keep it at 1-0.

Escobedo made it a brace for himself another three minutes later when he managed to bend the ball around Garcia on a timely assist from Ethan Koranda. It was another nine minutes before the next goal came, but Koranda was on the assist again, this time setting it up for Jamie Franson to make it 3-0 with eight minutes to go.

Elijah Slavik gave the game its final score on an assist from Aidan Gubbins a minute after that.

“Our intensity just really turned around (at the 57th minute),” Koranda said. “We just knew we needed to step it up and not be so comfortable. We came in too comfortable because it was senior night, but we realized we had to step it up. We turned it on and scored some goals.”

For Romeoville (7-9), it was a frustrating end to a mostly successful day. Head coach Nick Cirrincione praised his team’s effort for the first 57 minutes while lamenting the disappointing finish.

“We’ve got to go a full eighty (minutes),” he said. “Sixty out of eighty ain’t gonna get the job done. We played hard for sixty and then they took it to us. If you can’t go for eighty, bad things happen.”

The Spartans will attempt to get things turned around at Plainfield North on Thursday while Minooka will look to keep going Thursday at Joliet West.