Boys Soccer: Eddie Favela, Timothy Christian come alive in the second half, secure win over St. Edward

After a competitive first half Tuesday in Elgin, St. Edward led Timothy Christian 2-1. Then the wheels came off for the Green Wave.

The Trojans scored four second-half goals to secure a 5-2 Metro Suburban victory at Greg True Field.

Timothy took the lead five seconds in on an Eddie Favela goal. The Wave got it back quickly when Robert Wilson got loose on a breakaway, got past the Trojan goalkeeper and sailed the ball into the open net.

Later in the half, the Wave took the lead on a turnaround shot by Yahir Carachure.

The visitors outshot the Wave 7-5 in the first half and spent most of the period in the St. Edward end, but couldn’t finish.

That changed just over 10 minutes into the second half when Favela scored his second goal on a close-range shot.

Two minutes later, Cameron Baker knifed through the defense and fired a shot that the keeper nearly stopped. But the ball trickled through his hands into the net, putting the Trojans ahead to stay.

Jake Firnsin and Jake Alex added goals for Timothy (6-2-1). Baker and Chris Cruz each had two assists.

Wave coach Tim Brieger was happy to see his team play through the adversity.

“I was proud of my guys,” said Brieger. “We played through it. I told them that two weeks ago we wouldn’t have played through it. We would have just folded like a house of cards and just given it away. And we showed some fight at the end. I don’t care about wins as much as I care about are we going to get better, and one of the things we’ve talked about lately is that when teams get physical with us, kind of back down a little bit. When we get down a couple of goals, we start just launching it. And we kept going. And Morgan [Sajtar] in goal is just a beast.”

The Trojans dominated the second half, outshooting the Wave 14-2.

Peter Buikema and Kyle Steiner shared the netminding duties for the Trojans.

“I think we woke up,” said Timothy Christian coach Joel Zielke. “For whatever reason in the first half, we tried to play very direct. There was a very strong wind today and that didn’t help. A lot of balls were getting knocked down and we were skipping our midfield, which is the strength of our team. So we made some adjustments at halftime.”