From Coach Ed Berberich:

The MCHS Soccer Aces recently ended their season, and a stretch of 4 games in 4 nights, with a 9-1 win over the visiting Marion Wildcats. The Aces started strong with Levi Beesley scoring in the 10th minute, assisted by Eli Bertram. Rayce Loudermilk scored a few minutes later on an assist from Britton Heinrich and a key pass from Ethan Belt. Heinrich then added a goal, assisted by Jack Deisher. The Wildcats scored to bring themselves within 3-1, but Rayce Loudermilk quickly scored again, assisted by Bertram, to push the lead back up to 4-1 at the half. The strong play continued in the 2nd half, with Rayce Loudermilk scoring off an assist from Shade Loudermilk, with a key pass from Heinrich. Rayce scored his 4th goal of the match on an assist from Belt, followed shortly after by Belt setting up Jarrett West for a goal. Brady Decker scored a goal on an assist from Heinrich, followed by Belt scoring the final goal of the match, pushing the score to 9-1. For the match the Aces took 23 shots, 14 on frame, created 7 additional scoring chances & had 7 interceptions. Tye Kanipe had 2 saves in goal. The Wildcats took 3 shots, 2 on frame.

With 4 goals in this one to conclude a string of multi-goal games, Rayce Loudermilk was named the MaxPreps player of the week for Illinois soccer. This is voted on by MaxPreps and the United Soccer Coaches Association. Teams do not submit players for this, all players who have stats entered into MaxPreps are eligible to win, so the pool is quite large.

The guys were looking forward to playing one last home game against a good team this season, and that desire showed from the start. We came out with energy and dominated the run of play throughout the match. Considering the amount of soccer that they'd just played, in a season where we didn't get to do much conditioning, it was an impressive performance. Marion had a couple players out from injuries, but the way we played left no doubt that these guys just weren't going to lose this game regardless. It's tough because we were really rounding into form this past week and these guys deserved a chance to make another deep playoff run. With the way we were playing at the end of the season I feel we could have had a lot of success, so it's heartbreaking that these guys didn't get the opportunity to keep it going. This was made all the more bittersweet because it was the last match in the careers of a great group of seniors: Ethan Belt, Brady Decker, Jack Deisher, Britton Heinrich, Tye Kanipe, Rayce Loudermilk and Jarrett West. Even with this year being cut short on them, they had a great 4 year run, & in particular these last 2 years were historic with only 3 losses by a total of 4 goals. We've not gone into a single game these last 2 years that I didn't think we could/should win. It's been a blessing to watch these guys grow and accomplish everything we were able to. They've left a high bar to clear, and we'll miss them all next year, but they've helped the program immensely and have given the returning players something to aim for.

The Aces season ends with their record at 9-2 (3-0 in Little Illini play).