Adorned with Crystal Lake Central’s orange, black and white colors, a banner with the phrase “Earn It Every Day” hangs inside the seating shelter that rests on the home sideline of the varsity soccer field.

The banner is a daily reminder of the intensity and focus that have, among other factors, elevated Central’s girls soccer program to be one of Class 2A’s more dominant programs in the last decade. Since 2017, the Tigers have scored over 140 wins and brought home five IHSA regional, four sectional and two supersectional championships.

That second supersectional run in 2024 culminated in a trip to the state finals, where the Tigers edged Triad 1-0 to claim their first championship. Addison Schaffer, Ella Bechler, Kira Stavropoulos, and Peyton McMahon were all sophomores at the time. They are now the lone four seniors poised to lead the Tigers back to the state tournament.

“I’ve grown up knowing [Central] is a good team,” Bechler said. “My seventh and eighth-grade year, I started hearing more about it and how much they were accomplishing. My eighth-grade year, they made it to sectionals, which was really cool to hear about. It was exciting to be at that young age and look forward to playing at this level.”

Central is once again dominating this season. Currently 15-2 and 9-0 in the FVC, the Tigers are a No. 1 seed in their sub-sectional and will host both regionals and sectionals. After a 3-2 loss to Lake Forest in their first game, the Tigers have outscored teams 83-6. Central went on a 15-game winning streak before falling to Lakes on May 14.

“I attribute this season to our seniors knowing what they wanted to get done and being the kind of leaders that bring up our incoming freshmen and the players that didn’t have as much of an impact last year,” Central coach Leah Rutkowski said. “They’ve had that desire to win and compete ingrained in them by the players who came before them. It’s been cool to see them pass that along to our younger girls.”

In the last five seasons, Central has won four Fox Valley Conference titles while going unbeaten three times and dropping just two games. A key component to that success has been the team’s speed up top. Schaffer, a Loyola Chicago recruit who’s earned All-FVC and All-Area honors twice in her career, is one of the team’s many goal scorers.

“It’s just our chemistry,” Schaffer said. “We’ve been building it outside of soccer too and I think that’s helped us combine together on the field better because we’re always talked to each other.”

Defensively, Central’s dynamic movement and coverage have created fits for opposing attackers. The Tigers have played 124 games over the last six seasons and have held teams to an average of 0.9 goals per game in that time. This season, that average is 0.53 per game.

Central has 11 shutouts this season and only two opponents, Lake Forest and Lakes, have scored two or more times in a game.

“We’re really calm and collected on the ball,” said Stavropoulos, who plays center back. “We don’t just boot it every time. We work well at breaking through the lines and starting the offensive attack. We do a lot of transitional drills. We’ll have scenarios where the defense is caught off-guard, so we have to sprint back and cover each other. It’s not structured. We’re put in situations where we have to be creative.”

Success isn’t entirely new for the program. Dating back nearly four decades, Tom Kellner went 102-70-4 over nine seasons spanning the 1980s and 1990s. Joe Schroeder went 66-43-9 from 2005-10 and Jay Schwartzrock went 50-46-6 in his second stint from 2011-16.

But the program made a notable ascension when Sarah Fack took the reigns in 2017. A two-time Northwest Herald Coach of the Year, Fack guided the Tigers to regional and sectional titles in just her third year as the coach. She presided over the team’s third-place state finish in 2023 as well as the team’s state championship run the following year.

“It was definitely a long time of building the culture we have today,” said Rutkowski, who coached JV soccer and worked under both Fack and Schwartzrock before becoming head coach of both the girls and boys programs. “Because we’ve put the work in to build that winning culture, girls and boys know when they make a team at Central, the expectation is to play to a level where we’re going to get results.”

Fack stepped down with a 111-37-4 mark from 2017-24. Rutkowski, who’s run as the boys coach since 2023, took the girls program over and has maintained that high standard. Central went 18-5-1, 8-1 in the FVC and won regional and sectional titles last spring.

Even with a 5-to-6 day-per-week practice schedule and plenty of offseason workouts, Rutkowski finds her players wanting more.

“They beg for more soccer,” Rutkowski said. “In the summer, when we’re not doing stuff, they’re like, ‘Coach, can we get an open field going? Can we come out and play?’ I don’t know if everybody has that, but I think that’s been such a factor in our success. The kids love each other. If I have to cancel practice, everyone gets mad.”

Many of Central’s varsity players grew up attending the school’s youth camps and competing with clubs like Force FC, an association founded in 1976 that is home to over 2,000 players according to its website. Seniors like McMahon, who’s back healthy after missing her junior season to an injured knee, have benefited from that infrastructure.

“I grew up playing soccer at Force, which is just down the street,” McMahon said. “I’ve been playing since I was 6 years old and I used to come to all of the Central camps. ... In the past, a lot of the upperclassmen didn’t come to the camps, but we’ve been trying to enforce that. It helps bring our team culture and build that with the eighth-graders. We get to know their names and learn who they are.”

Physical defense and a balanced, quick offense are creating results on the field. Off the field, Central’s players have found ways to not only stay connected but keep their competitive spirit aflame. Hacky sack is frequently played outside the team bus and pasta parties, typically the day before games, have forged new friendships and memories.

“We like to play a little hacky sack at the beginning of practice and that gets our legs moving,” McMahon said. “It makes us super competitive and that’s what I love about this group. We’re always competitive, no matter what the drill is. Before the bus, we’re repping hacky sack and we all get after it. That’s the culture we’ve created.”