It was a battle of Team Chicago Academy players when the Metea Valley H.S. freshmen just played the Neuqua Valley H.S. freshman.

It was a great game that Neuqua won 2-1. Team Chicago Academy U15 Head Coach Mike Schmitt enjoyed watching his coaching efforts pay off with the strong performances by the following boys.

From left to right: Steven Kizorek, Connor Ahler, Dominic Duffy, Michael Vivo, Adam Bose, Spencer Wiese, Alex Simonich, Antonio Magno, George Fitsalos, Emerson Beinhauer, Wesley Anderson, Alex Filo, Aayush Kaul, and Calum Nettleton.

Dominic Duffy, Max Graf, Wesley Anderson and Emerson Beinhauer all began their travel soccer career together as original members of the Eagles. They came to the club as U7 players in 2005, first coached by Liz D’Addario. Thy went on to be coached by Bill Harris for three years, Brian Bierman for one and have been led by Mike Schmitt for the last three years.

This fall, Wesley Anderson and Dominic Duffy are starters for the Metea Valley freshman team. Max Graf is starting for JV1 at Metea, and Emerson Beinhauer is a starter for the Neuqua Valley freshman team. After the high school season is complete, these four boys will come back to Team Chicago Academy and Coach Mike for their ninth year together with the U15 Eagles.

Team Chicago Academy-Santos winger Olivia Schmitt is currently participating in the Asian Football Federation Championships in Myanmar with the Philippine Women’s National Team.

Olivia’s mom Vida is from the Philippines, and last year Olivia started pursuing her dream of representing her mom’s native country at the international level. She went to extensive training/tryout camps in California before finally getting picked to be on the Philippine roster at the AFF Championships.

Olivia left for another training camp in Manila on August 24th, and after 2 weeks of training the Malditas arrived in Myanmar for the Championships. Thus far they have played two games and Olivia has started in both. They opened with a 6-0 victory over Indonesia, and then early this morning Chicago time they lost 4-1 to the Japanese U23 National Team. A pretty impressive showing for a team that consists mainly of U.S.-based high school-aged players like Olivia.

Next up for the Olivia and her team is a match against the hosts Myanmar on Saturday. With a win they should secure a spot in the semi-finals against either Thailand or the Australian U19 team.

The picture with this story is of Olivia on the official game poster for the Japan game.

Good luck Liv! You are making us proud all the way on the other side of the world :-)

Team Chicago Academy-Bahia opened its MRL campaign with a convincing 3-0 win over Racine United.

The first half started off going back and forth with each team trying to figure each other out, but as the game wore on Bahia dominated possession. Paige Miller created the first goal by cutting the ball sharply past her defender, and then drilled the ball into the corner past their goal keeper for the only goal of the half.

In the second half Bahia came out attacking and almost scored in the first few minutes off of a combination with Paige Miller and Lauren Douglass. Lauren made a great overlapping run and continued driving to the end line before serving a ball that escaped everyone.

Bahia’s second goal of the game was created by a nice combination between Jennifer Garcia and Sophia Majher. The play started with good build up in the midfield through Natalie Massa who found Jennifer isolated on the left side. Jennifer beat her player off the dribble and served in a nice ball to Sophia who calmly placed her shot in the corner. The final goal was credited as an own goal but was created through the pressure that Bahia applied.

Bahia will now travel to Indianapolis this Saturday for one MRL game vs. FC Pride, and then play two non-league friendly matches against some great Midwest teams.

Team Chicago Academy-Brasilia is off to a great start in IYSA State Cup round-robin play with an impressive 4-0 win over Kickers.

The opening 10 minutes saw some great combination play, and Brasilia continued to move the ball very well, but just couldn’t find the back of the net. Just before half-time Kickers cleared a Brasilia corner that found Maggie Roe who calmly served a great ball to the back post for Safia Hannin to bury the chance to go up 1-0.

Brasilia continued to dominate possession in the second half, but didn’t get the insurance goal until Emerson Fuller went strong into a tackle and won the ball, and then played Maggie Roe in on goal. Maggie had a very nice finish to make it 2-0.

The third goal was a classic finish by Jasmine Ruiz who was played in, and she fought off pressure and fired the ball past the keeper to the far post. Rounding out the scoring was a nice combination between Rachel White, Maggie Roe and McKenna Schoolman resulting in Maggie committing the keeper before playing the ball across for McKenna to finish. Great overall team effort and special recognition to the defense for not allowing a goal against a very disruptive style of play.

Next up for Brasilia in State Cup is a game tomorrow (Wednesday 9/11) at 5:30pm at Nike Park versus NSA the reigning 2013 Region II champions.