Mount Carmel faced their rivals, the Brother Rice Crusaders, on Tuesday of Carmel’s homecoming week. The final score of the game was Carmel 5, Brother Rice 0. The win took the Caravan soccer team to a record of 8 wins and 3 losses. 

Rice came into this game being 5-10 but Carmel soccer didn’t take them easy. With a record of 2-1 in Catholic league they need to win all their games. In hopes of winning Catholic league.  They played a very young Rice team with 5 freshman starters. Caravan dominated the whole game by having the most possession of the ball. They also kept a clean sheet by not conceding any goals. They had 14 shots with five of them landing in the back of Rice’s goal. Rice had only 3 shots in all 80 minutes of play. Carmel had a very strong attack and a solid defense. They rotated players in the second half giving the starters a break for their next game and handing some players some good minutes. 

The captain of the Caravan soccer team, Marco Valencia, scored a brace, meaning he had two goals. Marco was on a goal drought, previously only scoring goals from penalties this season. “I am thrilled that I broke my drought,” he said, “and hopefully I can score more goals in big games and lead my team to many more victories. This was a game we had to win knowing that the varsity team last year also beat them.” 

Junior Dominic Gadalinski also had a big game. He scored a hat trick, with one of his goals being a screamer from outside of the box to top it all off. “The team did pretty well, but there’s always things to improve upon,” he said afterward. “We have to move the ball better and we need to play harder. If we play harder the more challenging teams will become easier.”

Even a big win still provides learning opportunities. “Something to learn from this game is communicating with your teammates,” said Gadalinski. “If you communicate you always get good results. Being silent won’t get you anywhere and will always make you worse. Our communication was good but there was always room for improvement. I mean I don’t know but as long as I’m contributing to the team in some way that makes me happy,”

The Caravan team then went to Iowa to defend their title in a tournament battle against highly-ranked opposition.  They defeated Quincy Notre Dame High School, ranked #16 in Illinois high school soccer and #142 in the nation, by a score of 4-3. The Caravan lost 3-0 to the Marquette University High School team who are ranked #15 in the nation and the top-ranked team in Wisconsin. They beat Peoria Notre Dame 2-0. The team went on to win 2 out of 3 games the whole tournament though did not come back to Chicago with the tournament championship.

Carmel is 3-1 in the Catholic League. The Caravan soccer team hopes to win the Catholic League after last season was shortened due to COVID with only 7 games being played. The team hopes to bring that title back to 6410.