Boys soccer: Mendota blanks Kewanee for fifth straight regional title

Trojans to play Quincy Notre Dame in sectional semifinal

Members of the Mendota boys soccer team surround teammate Johan Cortez after he scores a goal against Kewanee during the Class 1A Regional game on Wednesday Oct. 18, 2023 at Mendota High School.

Mendota boys soccer coach Nick Myers felt there was some doubt about his team entering the season after the Trojans graduated 10 seniors from last year’s sectional finalist.

There was no reason for doubt.

The Trojans added a young talent to their returning veterans and won 19 games during the regular season.

On Wednesday, Mendota continued its tradition of winning postseason hardware.

The No. 1-seeded Trojans scored three goals in the second half and got their 15th shutout of the season to beat No. 4 Kewanee 4-0 in the Class 1A Mendota Regional championship.

It’s the fifth consecutive regional title for the Trojans.

“It’s an awesome feeling,” Myers said. “We kind of set [winning a regional] as the expectation. That’s always one of our goals. This is a stepping stone to where we want to go, which is eventually we’d like to make it to our first state tournament.

“This is a group that has worked really hard. It’s a very young group that I think a lot of people slept on over the summer because we lost 10 seniors. I think some people thought this might be the year we take a step back, but these kids have worked hard and they’ve always believed in themselves. It showed by the quality of teams we keep beating throughout the season.”

Mendota's Cesar Casas dribbles around Kewanee's Jack Coombes during the Class 1A Regional game on Wednesday Oct. 18, 2023 at Mendota High School.

Mendota (21-2-2) advances to play defending 1A state champion Quincy Notre Dame in an Illinois Valley Central Sectional semifinal at noon Saturday.

“We’re all very excited,” Mendota freshman Isaac Diaz said. “We’re very happy to be moving on to sectionals.

“We expect (QND) to be very tough. I think we can beat them. We need high intensity.”

The two teams have postseason history as they’ve met in a sectional the past three seasons with QND winning twice.

“We tied them this year 2-2 [in a tournament]. I think they had opportunities to make it more than two and so did we,” Myers said. “I think our guys are really looking forward to it. This will be the fourth sectional in a row we’ve played them. They’ve won two and we won one, so hopefully we can tie up the series. I think we’re coming in this year a lot more confident than last year when we played them just because we played them [this season], and we saw we had the ability to beat them. But they’re the defending state champs, so it’s never going to be easy.”

On Wednesday with a light rain falling, neither team got much going for the first 25 minutes.

Then the Trojans started to put on some pressure.

Izaiah Nanez headed in a goal that was waived off with 12:54 left in the first half.

Mendota's Ramiro Palacios beats Kewanee's Christian Bretado to a header during the Class 1A Regional game on Wednesday Oct. 18, 2023 at Mendota High School.

But 4:55 later, the Trojans got on the board when Diaz lofted the ball over the keeper with 7:59 left in the opening half.

“I just received the ball, turned and shot the ball and it went over the keeper. That’s it,” Diaz said.

Mendota took the 1-0 lead into halftime.

“We talked about us getting the nerves out early in the game, especially with us being a young team,” Myers said. “I thought we did play a little nervous at the start, but I thought we played well. Kewanee made it very difficult for us to score in the first half. That goal by Isaac was key, I think, to get us a 1-0 lead going into half. The longer we let Kewanee stay in the game, the more dangerous it got.”

In the second half, Diaz scored again with 23:14 left in the game, Sebastian Carlos got the ball off a scramble and found the back of the net with 16:55 left, and Johan Cortez blasted a long free kick into the net with 12:46 left.

“In the second half, I thought we played outstanding,” Myers said. “We made smarter decisions. We started shooting the ball from outside the box, which we talked about at halftime, and it worked. Most of our goals came from outside the 18 in the second half. When a team packs it in like that, we have to learn to start shooting from the outside and force them to come out of that.”

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