Allen scores five goals in victory against St. Joe’s.
By Mike Miazga
Correspondent
In recent years, the Timothy Christian boys soccer team and postseason success have gone hand in hand.
That trend continued after the Trojans recorded a 6-1 victory over St. Joseph to win the Class 2A Ottawa Township regional title.
Timothy advanced to Wednesday’s Class 2A Wheaton Academy sectional semifinals against Kaneland. A win against Kaneland puts the Trojans in the sectional final Friday against either Wheaton Academy or Glenbard South.
Earlier, the Trojans downed Plano 10-2 in the sectional semifinals in Ottawa.
Jimmy Allen scored five of the team’s 10 goals and at that point upped his career goals total to 104 at Timothy.
“That’s crazy,” said Timothy Christian coach Steve Fernandes of Allen’s career total. “That’s a school record. He has 17 this year (as of the Plano game) and he missed most of this year with hamstring issues. He had a game against Plano and he’s just getting back into form.”
Fernandes said it took a bit for his squad to gain footing against Plano. “We started slow, but once we started moving the ball and figuring out we had the ability to move the ball and get wide and get numbers, we started creating some very good scoring opportunities. We figured out what we needed to do to get it done and what kind of plays score goals. Hopefully we can bring this into games against even tougher opponents.”
In earlier matches prior to the playoffs, Timothy downed Riverside-Brookfield 1-0 and lost to Fenton 4-2. Both those teams reside in the larger-school Metro Suburban Conference Blue Division.
“It was good to end the regular season against those teams,” said Fernandes. “We played Fenton on a Monday and that was a tough game coming off homecoming weekend and we had some kids who were sick. It was a 4-2 game and we led 2-1 at one point. Playing against a good team like Fenton, we improved in a lot of ways. We saw some things we needed to fix against these high-level teams. We fixed that against R-B. It was good to get a shutout win and to have that experience of being in a 1-0 game going into the playoffs.”
Through the Plano game, Mike Martens was leading the Trojans with 27 goals and 18 assists.
“I still believe Mike is the best player we’ve seen all year,” said Fernandes. “He’s been leading us with Jimmy out most of the year. We have some good guys up top certainly with Mike with his speed, technical ability and he can finish. It’s nice to have Jimmy there as well relieving some of that weight.”
Being in the Wheaton Academy sectional, Fernandes recalled the team’s blowout loss to the host team to start the season. If Timothy defeated Kaneland, it could see Wheaton Academy in the sectional final Friday.
“We are a better team now than we were then,” he said.
