St. Viator tops Wheaton Academy to reach state finals
Meghan McGrath thought back a few months and remembered Mike Taylor's prediction.
"This is our goal from the beginning of the season," McGrath said after she and her St. Viator teammates defeated Wheaton Academy 3-0 in a Class 2A girls soccer semifinal Friday. "Our coach told us right away, 'You guys will be in that final game. I'm telling you right now.' Until we got to this game I don't think we believed it, but now we do."
Turns out the veteran coach can call it. St. Viator will play Belleville Althoff for the state championship at 1 p.m. Saturday at North Central College in Naperville. Defending champion Wheaton Academy will meet Peoria Notre Dame at 11 a.m. in the third-place game.
"We fought hard, but I guess it just wasn't our day today," Wheaton Academy senior midfielder Meghan Grant said. "But I'm so proud of everyone on the team. We're leaving with our heads high. We still gave it our best. Sometimes it just doesn't work out. ... We're going to come out hard tomorrow and it will be exciting to win third place, and that's still a big deal."
It was expected to be a close game, but the Lions broke it open early. Taylor Skala surprised the Warriors with an unassisted goal from a difficult angle in the 11th minute, her 36th score of the season.
"It really got us moving," McGrath said. "We were really nervous for this game, and the first goal really calmed our nerves. Then we started playing to feet more and really looked for the open person. We started playing our own game instead of the other team's game."
Just more than a minute later, the junior forward assisted on Keegan Griebel's goal to make it 2-0.
"It was very big," McGrath added. "It probably switched the game for us, because after that first goal we were like, they can still come back, they can still come win it. Once we got the second goal we were like, we have this, we can keep going. Then the third one came and we just kept getting chances."
The Lions gave themselves a little more breathing room in the 22nd minute. Off a St. Viator corner kick, McGrath found sophomore Katelyn Hammarlund hanging out near a Wheaton Academy goalpost, and Hammarlund just turned and poked the ball into the net from about a yard out.
"We made five first-half mistakes that were significant, and they scored on three of them," Warriors coach Scott Marksberry said. "... Other than that I thought we played well in the first half. We were there. We were in the game. We created a couple of decent chances in the first half. We were able to get through their defense. We just didn't score. Their three went in."
Wheaton Academy's best scoring chance came in the 45th minute when Alexa Sharkey, moved back to forward after spending the first half and much of the season at defensive midfielder, hit a shot off the crossbar.
"Our defense was really our core. Having Ariana (Kulczenko) in the back helped us all because she calms us all down," Hammarlund said. "They gave us a challenge. They had a lot of skilled girls, but I think we came really prepared."