GLEN CARBON - The Father McGivney boys soccer team is off and rolling.
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The Griffins are undefeated through their first six games with a 5-0-1 record.
The last time McGivney stayed undefeated this long was back in 2016 where it posted a 4-0-2 record through six games.
Their record improved Monday afternoon after they hosted and defeated the Jerseyville Panthers by a score of 5-0.
After a scoreless opening half hour, the dam finally broke and McGivney grabbed the lead then quickly doubled it.
All thanks to senior forward Spencer Martin.
He ran onto a perfect through ball right at the half field line, using a burst of speed and a little strength to shove off a couple of defenders before putting the ball bottom left corner to make it 1-0 in the 31st minute.
Immediately after the kick off, the Griffins regained possession due to an unfortunate Jersey turnover, and Martin made no mistake of doubling the lead.
The game went into halftime at 2-0 before a three-goal second half.
Alec Frohnert, Lucas Roedl, and Mason Holmes all scored in the 53rd, 62nd, and 67th minutes, respectively.
Jacoby Danco had a couple of assists while Owen Weissert, Tyler Ahring, and Brendan Kayser each had a helper.
Goalkeeper Patrick Gierer earned his third shutout of the season.
The game was close early on as the Panthers were defending as if their life depended on it. The Griffins’ head coach Matt McVicar didn’t love that his side couldn’t find the net sooner.
“No, I don’t, but once you get one, it goes,” he said. “And credit to [Jersey]. They worked hard defensively. You’d love to score early and often if we can, but if we can’t we just want to make them chase the ball.”
The Panthers had to play chase a lot on Monday as McGivney dominated possession in long spells, switching sides of the field frequently, and always seeming to find an open man.
McVicar’s go-to strategy is to just play simple, and when it works, it really works.
“I want to keep the ball,” McVicar said. “I want them to chase us. At the end of the game, you can tell, they’re done chasing and we have a lot more success with the ball, connecting, and creating a lot more chances.”
And you’ve got to have possession of the ball if you want to score goals, something the Griffins haven’t been struggling with either, outsourcing their first six opponents 26-3.
In that time, 11 different players have found the back of the net. Martin leads the team with four goals while Will Rakers and Chris Machetti each have three. The assists have also come from 10 different players as offense seems to generate from anywhere and anyone.
Now, McGivney moves into the heart of the season. Monday kicked off a four game work week.
“It gets real tough in conference play,” McVicar said. “Althoff tomorrow, Marquette on Thursday. I think their mindset’s right. They just have to come out and execute.”
The Griffins are already 1-0 in the Gateway Metro Conference after a historic 9-0 win over Metro-East Lutheran back on Saturday.
McGivney has been making strides on improving its sports complex with new additions like scoreboards, and for the soccer field, lights. Saturday’s game against MEL was the first played under those new lights.
“The game under the lights was amazing,” McVicar said. “The boys have been talking about it for a while. They got done the day before, so nobody had seen the lights. Coming out and playing underneath them was a lot of fun. It was a good atmosphere from both teams because it was a local game.”
McGivney looks forward to hosting a couple more night games on Oct. 4 against Maryville Christian and on Oct. 12 against Breese Central, both being Saturday nights.
“We tried to do Friday night lights because we don’t have football but a lot of the other schools have football and don’t really want to play on Friday,” McVicar said. “Which is totally fine, we’ll just do Saturday night football. I think people will do it.”
The Griffins couldn't really change their schedule up too much anyway because referring assignments had already been made for those pre-existing day games.
But it’s still a fun time to be a Griffins soccer fan. They’ll host Althoff (3-2) tomorrow (Sept. 10) at 4:30 p.m.
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