Mother McAuley’s soccer team is filled with young stars, but senior midfielder Alina Mannion is the veteran leader who brings it all together.
Mannion encouraged some of her current teammates to join the Mighty Macs before they got to high school and has supported them ever since they arrived.
“The young girls have looked up to her from the minute they first stepped onto the field here, and I feel like every minute they look up to her,” McAuley coach Megan McCauley said of Mannion. “She just has that personality where she knows how to lift people up around her.
“She does it, too, with her game. She knows how to get people going.”
Mannion is doing more than just inspiring her teammates, too. She’s upped her offensive game.
She showed that off Monday night, scoring her third goal of the season and adding an assist to lead the host Mighty Macs to a 2-1 win over Homewood-Flossmoor in Chicago.
Sophomore forward Calli Edwards also scored for McAuley (4-4). Lucy Gray made six saves.
Paris Jones contributed a goal and Cristina Ramirez finished with two saves for H-F (6-2), which had its six-game winning streak snapped.
Edwards became an immediate star for the Mighty Macs as a freshman last season when she scored 30 goals.
Mannion saw that coming.
When Mannion returned to St. Linus, where she played soccer in grammar school, and saw Edwards, she knew she wanted to be her teammate.
“We’ve always been wanting her,” Mannion said of Edwards. “She was our No. 1. I was honestly surprised she came to McAuley, but when she did, the coaches, players, everyone was so excited that she came to play with us.”
Edwards certainly felt welcomed. She called Mannion a “great mentor.”
“Even when I was in grammar school at St. Linus, she would come watch me play and always be like, ‘Oh, you better be coming to McAuley,’” Edwards said. “When I came in, she was always like the first one there to talk to me.
“Every time I’m in the hallway, she’ll come up to me and be like, ‘It’s gameday.’ She always gets me hyped. It’s just great to have someone like that.”
Edwards got the Mighty Macs going in the opening minute Monday, scoring off Mannion’s free kick.
It was a display of the duo’s chemistry.
“We click together on the field, off the field, all the time,” Mannion said of her and Edwards. “I feel like we know how each other plays and we just build off each other’s momentum.”
Jones answered for H-F seven minutes later and the game remained tied 1-1 into the second half.
Mannion scored the winning goal with 32 minutes to go, taking a 30-yard free kick on the right side of the field and ripping a perfectly placed shot into the top-left corner of the net.
“When she was walking up to that ball, I felt it,” McCauley said. “I felt that it was going to go in. It did, and it was awesome.
“We’ve been wanting to do more off our set pieces, and Alina is doing a great job with them.”
Mannion has already matched her goal total from all of last season with three. She has a new sense of belief in her ability to score.
“When I got that free kick, right then and there, it clicked in my head that I should just take the shot,” Mannion said. “I feel like I’m more confident going forward instead of just playing a defensive game. Now I have the confidence to straight up shoot it instead of just crossing it in.
“I’m ready to shoot it as hard as I can.”
Steve Millar is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
