St. Viator rolls into supersectional

Top seed St. Viator (21-4-1) wasted little time in claiming its sectional championship trophy Friday afternoon. The Lions scored 4 first-half goals before cruising to a 6-1 victory over an undermanned Wells High School of the Chicago Public League on Friday afternoon in Elmwood Park.

The Lions advance to meet long-time East Suburban Catholic Conference rival St. Joseph on Tuesday in the Benedictine College supersectional in Lisle at 4:30 p.m., with a berth in the Class 2A state semifinals at stake.

"We played a pretty good ballgame today, good enough to beat Wells and get through and into the supers, and one match away from reaching our goal of getting into the state tournament and a chance at winning a title," said Lions coach Mike Taylor.

"We got ourselves a 4-goal lead, then (we) let up and coach Taylor pulled some guys off to have a talk and to get the rest of us focused on playing well again," said junior Jack Horvath, who scored and recorded assists on strikes from Kevin Cavers and Joe Schmidt.

The Lions, who had outscored their 3 previous postseason opponents 19-1, opened fast against the No. 11-seeded Raiders.

Cavers and Horvath made it 2-0 in the first eight minutes of the match, before Lions leading scorer Alan Aboona added his 34th goal of the season just after the quarter-hour mark.

The senior added another goal to his resume at 33 minutes before resting a sore ankle for the rest of the game.

The Lions conceded a goal to the Raiders, prompting Taylor to send off a handful of players from his first 11. But he later returned the starters, leading to a pair of goals from Cavers and Joe Schmidt to finish the scoring.

"I didn't like what I saw, and at this time of the tournament, we cannot afford to get away from what we've been doing with one of the most important matches of the season coming up next Tuesday," said Taylor.

With Scott Faul out of the lineup with an illness, senior Patrick Windle earned the win in goal for the Lions.