The stage is set: Wheaton Academy-Marmion Part II

By Gary Larsen

If you’re out for a scenic drive in the country on Saturday and find yourself anywhere near Hampshire high school, stop on by.

There figures to be a whale of a soccer game going on.

The top two seeds of the Class 2A Hampshire sectional – No. 1 Wheaton Academy (17-4-2) and No. 2 Marmion (20-5-1) – will be playing for a sectional title at 4 p.m.

Saturday’s game will be a rematch of a 5-4 Wheaton Academy win over Marmion on September 21.

“It’s been our goal this whole year to get back at Wheaton Academy,” Marmion senior Max Rosenfelder said. “Now we get the rematch.”

Two teams that like to move the ball around the pitch may struggle to do so on a rain-soaked field in Hampshire, but you can bet they’ll try.

The first time the two teams met at Marmion, a Rosenfelder-to-Sam Duffield connection accounted for 3 of the Cadets’ 4 goals, with Rosenfelder netting the fourth.

The Warriors’ win featured tallies from William West, Devin Moore, Tim Daniels, Alex Varga, and a game-winning goal from Brandon VanderVeen on a Daniels assists with just more than one minute left in regulation.

Afterwards, Wheaton Academy Jeff Brooke was glad to see his boys get a quality win against a quality foe. The game also essentially decided the conference title in the maiden season of the Suburban Christian Conference.

"We have a ton of respect for Marmion and knew that they weren't going to go away,” Brooke said. “They're a well-coached team and they play a very good schedule which prepares them for intense moments like this.”

Both Marmion and Wheaton Academy play top-shelf schedules loaded with Class 3A programs. After losing three games in the season’s first week of play, Marmion has gone 19-2-1.

Wheaton Academy’s schedule is also annually loaded, and the Warriors went 2-1 against a trio of big dogs in Class 3A during the final week of the regular season. The Warriors posted wins over Benet and Geneva that preceded a loss to rival Wheaton Warrenville South, which plays Neuqua Valley in a 3A sectional title game on Saturday.

To get to Saturday’s rematch with Marmion, Wheaton Academy posted a trio of postseason shutouts: 3-0 over Grayslake Central, 1-0 over Oswego, and 6-0 over Antioch. Marmion won 7-0 over North Chicago and 2-1 over Johnsburg before posting a wild, 4-3 comeback win over Lakes.

Marmion coach Kevin O’Connor liked the second-half effort his squad posted during Wednesday’s comeback, but offered a cautionary word to his boys after a slow start against Lakes.

“We needed 80 minutes of urgency and we probably played with 57 minutes of urgency,” O’Connor said. “I thought in the last 15 minutes of the first half and throughout the second half we played some very nice soccer. We’ve got a good team and we played with a lot of heart today.”

“But we’ll need eighty minutes of that if we’re going to have a chance against Wheaton Academy.”

Class 2A sectional final
No. 1 Wheaton Academy vs. No. 2 Marmion
Hampshire high school
Saturday, October 31, 4 p.m