Metea Valley Starts a Senior Tradition

Walking out onto the field Saturday morning, Metea Valley's senior soccer players came face to face with their own images. The boys soccer team was celebrating its first senior day and the large cutouts was a way to show them support.

Metea Valley, which opened in 2009, honored its boys’ varsity soccer team with photo opportunities, yellow roses for players’ moms and large cutouts of players’ heads.

Eric Erwin, father of seniors Brett and Blake, was the one behind the large 48-inch head cutouts.  Erwin said the event was really important for the boys.

“It’s important the school establishes traditions that are right so the younger guys need to know how to act going forward,” Erwin said. “It’s a really important event for Metea and our boys because this is when they will start acting as leaders.” 

Pierre Schmidt, father of senior Joel, said that before the school opened and was in the planning stage, many people in the community became upset over whether the school should be located in Naperville or Aurora.   

Years later, Schmidt said the community has come together and rallied to support Metea and its students. 

“We’ve got pretty good school spirit,” Schmidt said. “The parents have been pretty good supporting the team. It’s a big milestone for a young guy and they have been relatively successful given the program’s youthfulness.”

The girls’ varsity soccer team helped bring out the 17 cutout heads when the seniors and their parents walked onto the field to meet head coach Josh Robinson. Junior midfielder Chloe Hind said her team wanted to support the boys because they do the same for them. 

“Since the seniors work so much for the team, it’s important that we honor them,” Hind said.

Robinson said the biggest challenge running a new program is trying to establish leadership among the team.

“They were the oldest ones in the eighth grade, on the freshman campus and then grades 10-12 here,” Robinson said. “They never really had a leadership model for them. That’s been the biggest difficulty creating the leadership. We are starting to see it now with the seniors, so hopefully the juniors and sophomores could model after them.”

Metea Valley principal Jim Schmid, watched Saturday’s soccer match. 

“I’m extremely proud of what they have done for Metea Valley athletically and from a leadership perspective,” Schmid said. “We’ve had two strong years back-to-back at the varsity level. We certainly appreciate the opportunity for them to begin the program and build a strong foundation for the future.”

The Mustangs (5-4-3) could not pull out a victory in a 2-0 loss to Lake Park (10-4-1) as junior midfielder Oliver Huerta and senior forward Joe Passarelli scored for the Lancers.