BETHALTO – The Civic Memorial boys soccer team is just rolling with the punches right now.
Opening up the season on a four-game skid with some lopsided losses to Father McGivney, Edwardsville, Springfield, and as of Wednesday, Althoff, the Eagles have been outscored 31-3 in that time span.
It’s a much different story than last year’s 4-0 start, winning Roxana’s Norman Lewis Invitational and outscoring their opponents 18-2 in that stretch.
This time around CM bumped up to the prestigious season-opening Metro Cup Showcase, playing with some of the big boys.
And it just hasn’t gone their way. And that’s okay.
Sure, there is frustration from the players as they want the results, but there is not a shred of panic from first-year head coach Tyler Lafferty.
Lafferty, an assistant under longtime head coach Derek Jarman, took over the head coaching job over the summer and has been tasked with continuing the rebuild from the 2022 squad that set an impressive 24-5 record.
“We definitely strengthened our schedule way more than last year,” Lafferty said. “We did that going in because you don’t compete against Mississippi Valley teams playing 1A schools.”
Last season, CM went 2-8 against MVC opponents and was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs by Mascoutah, ending with a 14-10 record.
“We added stronger teams to our schedule, we’ve been exposed to our weaknesses, and that’s all we’ve been doing is figuring out how to plug those weaknesses and hopefully, when we get to conference next week, we’ll be ready to compete,” Lafferty said.
Lafferty, who began his soccer career at CM before transferring to East Alton-Wood River and going on to play at Southwestern Illinois College and Western Illinois University, is trusting the process.
“If you look at our schedule, it gets easier as the season goes on,” he said. “We could have stacked up some small schools and maybe built more confidence, but our boys have character, and we’ll figure things out.”
“You don’t build a house putting up the walls first, you start with the solid foundation and we’re working on that foundation and going from there.”
That foundation consists of a four-person senior core of Justin Banovz, Trent Heflin, Tyler Wilson, and Tyler Mills. The roster bolsters nine juniors and 22 underclassmen.
“I would say we have younger players that are giving us a lot of minutes,” Lafferty said. “Off the bench, we’re playing quite a few freshmen. We have solid seniors; all four seniors are studs. It’s just about finding the pieces and connecting them. I would say that we still have potential for a good season.”
In Wednesday’s starting lineup against Althoff, Griffin Miller and Collin Hoffman made starts as freshmen while goalkeeper Brady Strubhart and midfielder Reed Wallace earned the start as sophomores. Three of the mentioned seniors started (Banovz, Wilson, and Mills) and juniors Ty Books, AJ Garrett, Nathan Taylor, and Talan Miller rounded out the squad in the 8-1 loss.
Two of those seniors have been called upon to play a different role this year. Garrett, last season’s second-leading goal scorer has been tasked with an important center-back role while Wilson is transitioning from an all-out attacker to more of a defensive midfielder.
It’s all in an effort to strengthen the backline and prevent these lopsided results.
“If we can lock down our back line, and not give up easy goals,” Lafferty said. “Set pieces are our weakness right now, and if we could take away other teams’ set pieces, our record would look a lot different. It wouldn’t be as many goals allowed.”
But Lafferty has been enjoying the bump up to head coach, nonetheless.
“It’s different,” he said with a smile. “Everyone has their own coaching style; I’m more of a questions-and-answers kind of guy. I’m not going to yell at you 24/7, because you don’t hear anything. I like to talk to players more one-on-one.”
“Having Eric (Zhung) here to help me with a lot of things behind the scenes, I brought my friend Justin (Lowry) who I played with in college, so having him here. More hands on deck,” Lafferty said.
The 0-4 start to the season doesn’t concern him or the coaching staff in the slightest.
“We want to be competitive in the Mississippi Valley,” Lafferty said. “The overall record doesn’t matter. It matters what you do in conference and the postseason.”
He believes his team will be up for the task.
“I’m 100 percent confident,” Lafferty said. “I think the boys know what we have to do. If we lock that down, and figure it out now, instead of figuring it out in October, we’ll hopefully see a big difference in where we’re at now, and where we’ll be at later in the season.”
CM opens its Mississippi Valley conference slate with road games at Waterloo and Highland next week.
