Trojans win final tuneup

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MUNDELEIN – It isn’t often that a tournament has no winner.

It’s even less frequent that a team outshoots its opponents by a significant margin and loses.

It didn’t matter. Cary-Grove’s boys soccer team used the three games it played this week at the Carmel Tournament as a tuneup for the Fox Valley Conference Valley Division season, which the Trojans begin Monday, one week after the rest of the field.

If the way the Trojans played in their 3-0 victory against the host Corsairs on Saturday was any indicator of what is to come in the next few weeks, the FVC Valley Division has been served notice.

C-G is in tune.

“Every practice we keep getting better as a team,” senior midfielder Eric Wilde said. “We’re just going to keep working hard.”

Saturday’s win in the round-robin tournament that included Lakes and St. Martin de Porres came on the heels of a fluky and disappointing loss to Lakes. The Trojans (9-2) controlled play and took five shots that hit the crossbar, but couldn’t finish. The Eagles capitalized on one of their only chances to win, 1-0.

C-G made sure nothing like that happened again Saturday. Wilde got the Trojans on the board in the third minute off a pass from senior midfielder Zac Solarte to make it 1-0 almost immediately.

The Trojans struck again 10 minutes later when Carmel sophomore Jeremy Jenich fouled C-G senior midfielder Drew Conner inside the box to set up a penalty kick. Conner converted for the 2-0 advantage in the 13th minute of play.

The match got chippy for the remainder of the first half, with C-G picking up 14 fouls to the Corsairs’ three. But the Trojans got back to their possession-oriented soccer in the second half and controlled the tempo save a few minutes at the start of the half.

“I thought we controlled the ball a lot better and also finished our opportunities,” C-G coach Mark Olson said. “That was the biggest thing, we really wanted to focus on finishing.”

Solarte connected with Wilde’s younger brother, sophomore forward Kevin Wilde, in the 58th minute on a corner kick. Kevin Wilde found the ball at the far post and headed it in for the Trojans’ final goal of the match.

“It was pretty high, so I pulled off to the back post and it came to me,” Kevin Wilde said. “We’ve scored on set pieces, others from open play. We like to be dynamic in our attack.”

Trojans senior keeper Tom Breen, who has given up only four goals all season, made eight saves against Carmel (7-4-2) to post C-G’s ninth shutout this year.

Follow Maureen Lynch on Twitter @nwh_molynch