If Eisenhower’s Galilea Esparza can’t use her speed to run by a defender, she has more than a few tricks up her sleeve to get past them.

The sophomore midfielder is an expert at fancy dribbling and juke moves that dazzle the crowd and leave opponents lost looking for her. But Esparza doesn’t plan any of it.

She just lets it happen.

“It’s more from what I worked on when I was little,” Esparza said. “I would practice those moves back then and now I just do it naturally. I don’t have to think about it. The more I think about it, the more I mess up.”

Esparza has not done much messing up of late. She stepped up Tuesday in the biggest moment, recording her second straight hat trick as the host Cardinals clinched at least a share of the South Suburban Red title with a 4-3 win over Oak Lawn in Blue Island.

Freshman forward Tania Frausto also scored for Eisenhower (7-8-1, 6-3-1), which took its first SSC Red title since 2019. The Cardinals can win outright Wednesday if they upset Lemont — otherwise they will share it with Reavis.

Adilene Perez, Sinead Conroy and Ashley Marquez scored goals for Oak Lawn (10-9-1, 3-7-1).

“We started off very slow this season and we made some adjustments personnel-wise and with positions, and we’ve been consistently playing well to get into this position,” Eisenhower coach Iran Rodriguez said. “This means a lot, especially for the girls. They deserve it.”

Esparza, who now has 18 goals this season, scored twice in a wild first half that ended with the Cardinals up 3-2. She completed her hat trick with 29 minutes left in the second half, lofting in a perfectly placed 30-yard shot.

“She’s talented,” Rodriguez said of Esparza. “She’s very technical and she has great vision. She’s creating opportunities for her teammates. Everything goes through her.

“I told her after her first goal, ‘You need to be selfish, because we need you.’ She came through.”

After an April 10 loss to T.F. United, Eisenhower was 1-7 overall and 0-3 in conference. But Esparza said she did her best to keep the team together.

The Cardinals have lost just once since and are unbeaten in the league.

“I kept encouraging the other players,” Esparza said. “I didn’t want anyone to put their heads down. We got to know each other better. We never yelled at each other or anything. We always kept everyone high and held up to our standards to accomplish our goals.”

Frausto said Esparza’s positivity has made a big difference.

“‘Gali’ pushes me a lot,” Frausto said. “She’s always telling me to keep my head up. She tells me that it’s good to make mistakes and it’ll make me better.”

Eisenhower survived while playing with nine players against 10 for the final 65 minutes after a skirmish between the teams resulted in three players getting red cards.

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Oak Lawn, in the midst of its best season in years, could not contain Esparza.

“She is a player,” Oak Lawn coach John Faro said of Esparza. “We had to figure out a way to slow her down. We weren’t going to stop her.

“We’re a young team. We’ve had a huge growth from last year. I think that chemistry is there, and there’s more of that bonding coming.”

Esparza, meanwhile, is finding great joy in a sport that once elicited very different emotions from her.

“I’ve been playing since I was 3 years old,” she said. “My dad put me on the team, and at first, I hated soccer.

“Every time I would go on the field, I would cry. But now I love it.”

Steve Millar is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.