St. Patrick is building toward something big
By Patrick Z. McGavin
On a cool, late Friday afternoon last October, St. Patrick made the 3 ½-mile trek from its campus on the city’s northwest side to Norridge to play in one of the most important games in the history of the program.
The Shamrocks ventured there for the championship game of a Class AA Ridgewood Regional against Prosser, a quality Chicago Public League program. The Falcons had won the coveted city title the year before and boasted some skilled and intriguing talent.
St. Patrick played with pace, skill and toughness. Coach Kyle McClure had built to this moment -- forged in setbacks, frustration and incremental progress. This was his third year directing the soccer program. In his first year the Shamrocks won just two games. He conceived a blueprint of utilizing training, technology and year-round play to alter the very foundation and culture of St. Patrick soccer.
“They hired me to make the soccer program more competitive,” said McClure, who played for two legendary high school coaches, Mark Schartner and Kevin Heffernan, at Stevenson.
“St. Patrick had really good players but never really good teams,” he said. “The program was pretty watered down when I got here.”
McClure knew that had to change. Fast forward three years.
Junior forward Chris Modrzejewski, a two-time all-conference player, sparked the run of play and provided the early advantage with a first half goal that ignited the Shamrocks’ 3-0 victory over Prosser.
It was the Shamrocks’ first regional crown in nine years. St. Patrick won back-to-back regionals in 2006 and 2007. From the available information, those appear to be the only two regional titles in school history. Nine years is a lifetime in high school sports, given how fast the game metabolizes and changes.
St. Patrick had a positive to draw on.
Four days later, St. Patrick traveled to Winnemac Stadium in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood to meet Fenwick in a semifinal match of the Amundsen Sectional. The Shamrocks competed well and and worked off the energy and momentum of their growing confidence.
Fenwick ended the Shamrocks’ season by recording the game-winner in the 70th minute of the 2-1 victory. The Friars fell in the final to eventual state champion Latin.
After last season, context was vital. St. Patrick had won just six combined games in McClure’s first two years of reorganizing the program.
In McClure’s third season, the Shamrocks made a breakthrough. The team finished a respectable 11-12-2. Some of their most impressive play happened against elite competition, like a 2-1 regular season loss to Latin, and St. Patrick beefed up its schedule with nine games against Class 3A programs.
“It has been a work in progress for us,” Modrzejewski said. “It is a lot of work, and the progress is showing for sure.”
On June 15, 2017, McClure, his top assistant, Melchor Castro, and his current roster of 19 varsity players are again on the move. They are pushing west to play in a high-profile summer tournament in Burlington, Iowa.
The team has gotten a taste of success but knows there remains vast room for improvement. The Burlington tournament is an important first step, a chance for the players to bond and develop necessary chemistry and closeness. It is also a test, a way for them to measure how far they have come against where they need to be.
“Last season is over, but I think this (tournament) is going to be a test for how much we have progressed from the offseason into the start of summer and going into the new season,” Modrzejewski said.
Rising seniors like Modrzejewski and midfielder Finn Elsmo have the best perspective. Their time at the school corresponds to McClure’s arrival. They have seen the difference.
“Everything is new,” Elsmo said. “I remember coming in as a freshman and hearing guys who were seniors talk about what the program was like before. They said the program was not serious, the players were nonchalant, and nobody really played for real.
“I also remember our very first practice, and coach McClure made it clear that he had high expectations, and he wanted us, players like me and Chris, to get the fundamentals.”
Castro, who coached the lower levels in McClure’s first year and has worked with him the last two years, also has an invaluable perspective and immediate connection to the players and school history.
“Kyle revamped the whole program when he came in,” Castro said. “It is night and day. I played here and graduated from St. Patrick in 2005. The coach that Kyle replaced was my coach my senior year. There was no motivation or unity within the group when I played. Practices were not organized. What Kyle has done is unite the whole program and made it into a family.”
Coaching takes on many forms and shapes, fusing together technical, skill work and training with an intuitive grasp of behavior, actions and work. Young players, McClure recognized, instinctively seek out order and structure. The key is making the game immersive, valuable and thrilling.
“You have to make it enough of an enjoyable experience that the kids want to get better,” McClure said. “What happened here in the past is that the kids would play for 2½ months during the season, and then they would not play the rest of the year. You are not going to be able to compete with the best teams playing only 2½ months.
“In my first year, we had nine varsity seniors and only one of them had played club soccer before. The early challenge was getting the kids to love the game enough, improve on their skills and keep playing in some capacity once the (high school) season was over.”
McClure’s coaching career trajectory is different than the typical high school soccer coach. He is not a teacher at the school. He graduated from law school and helped found a computer company. He coached in Lake County, at the LASC club program and at Warren. He was at the helm of the girls’ program at Regina Dominican in Wilmette when he was hired in the spring of 2014 to take over the Shamrocks’ program.
He adopted a vigorous and progressive interest in new technology. This fall, St. Patrick will become one of the first soccer programs to use a software technology called VidSwap that isolates and breaks down game film in order to produce teachable video instruction and clips for players. Each player will be issued an iPad with the app that will allow them instant access.
“The software allows me as the coach to simply input our roster, and the highlights of each player are automatically catalogued under his name,” McClure explained. “For instance, by clicking on a particular striker’s name, like Chris, it isolates every play during the game he was involved with. By simply clicking another tab, we could isolated those plays to something even more narrow.”
The team’s progress at the beginning of the McClure era was slow. The coaches preached patience.
“These are the stepping stones and this is where we become a force to be reckoned with,” Elsmo said. “Early on, every game we lost we learned something from. And we lost a lot. Kyle wanted to create a competitive environment, and I think now every single kid on the varsity has that competitive drive.”
The players have bought into the coaches’ year-round playing demands. In less than three years, the number of players involved with club has expanded nearly tenfold, according to McClure -- from just four or five players at the start of his tenure to now 40. In his first season, the fall of 2014, 17 of the incoming freshmen played soccer. McClure expects to that number to climb to 40 this year.
“Kids are coming to St Patrick to play soccer, and nobody used to do that,” he said.
Castro is another strong reference point.
“When I played here, just about everybody played organized soccer and then there seemed to be a drop off around 2007,” he said. Not coincidentally, it was the only time the school posted a non-losing record (12-12-1).
“The sport has changed so much. If you are a private school, like we are, parents have to pay a tuition -- it’s not cheap -- you have to find players that fit into the program and the school.
“It has been a tough way to go, especially when we started off with only two wins. The kids bought into a mindset we were offering, and it took over and last year we made a huge jump from the years before. The guys really started to believe. The freshmen have grown and developed so much more. We are only going up.”
With the exception of basketball, no other sport demands such intricate knowledge and self-awareness about how players fit together. McClure is building a sense of unity, closeness and connection.
“I know everybody says this, but it truly is like a family out there,” Elsmo said. “Sometimes at practice, we play games and get loose and have fun, but the very next day we are back, very serious and focused. This environment makes it fantastic to be on and off and the field.”
All the pieces -- the training, playing club and the confidence of last year’s run -- have painted a new picture of optimism and growth. Soccer is a psychologically demanding game. Momentum, confidence and validation are coveted though sometimes deeply elusive properties.
“This program is going to be 35 years old, and we have never had a winning season, as far as I know,” McClure said. “In the past it was more of a recreational program rather than a competitive program. In 34 years we have never finished in the top three of conference.
“These last three years have really been a build up for the next three years. We have 15 returning players and that should give us a big advantage over a lot of teams. We are going to Iowa to see how we stack up against the best high schools in the Midwest.
“We have already talked to the boys that we are going into every game to win this coming fall. We are not just trying to be competitive. In the past we were so used to losing that we’d find a way to lose. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Now we are expecting to win, and we are finding ways to do that.”
The pride has manifested in other ways. The program earned a coveted award from the NSCAA for academic achievement with a combined team GPA of 3.32.
Part of the next phase is to get stronger and physically fit. Already the signs point in an exciting direction -- the Shamrocks posted consecutive shutouts of University (Chicago) and East Suburban Catholic Conference rival Marist in the Western Summer League organized by St. Ignatius.
It is only the start.
“Moving forward we can always learn so we can become a better team,” Modrzejewski said. “The credit goes to coach McClure. He took a program that was not so serious and now we can compete with the top sports at our school, like football and basketball.”
2017 St. Patrick summer roster
(Player info from coach Kyle McClure, listed by school year)
Angel (Richie) Adame, sophomore, midfielder
“He is a consummate center midfielder who utilizes superior ball control to maintain possession, deliver excellent passes and can shoot and finish with either foot.”
Aaron Moreno-Lopez, sophomore, defender
“Aaron is excellent at cutting off angles and effectively utilizing slide tackles. Although he shines on the defensive side of the ball, Aaron has excellent field vision and strong passing skills.”
Sebastian (Bash) Modrzejewski, sophomore, forward
“He is a crafty and versatile player with the rare ability to play every position on the field. He specializes in using his body position to draw fouls.”
Jonathan Rodriguez, sophomore, defender
“He excels at winning balls in the air. He was the first freshman to be named all-conference in the last eight years. He is also a key ingredient on our free kick and corner kick schemes.”
Luis Angel Saucedo, sophomore, forward
“Luis Angel scored 13 goals last year, and expects to double that this year. He has excellent speed and finishing abilities. He is widely recognized as one of the best 15-year-old strikers in the state.”
Hebert Carrera, junior, midfielder
“Herbert scored in five of our nine conference games, and he has a knack for scoring against the toughest defenses. He is a highly skilled player able to utilize his excellent first touch to set up dangerous scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates.”
Erik Garcia, junior, midfielder
“Erik is a strong, physical athlete with a lot of versatility and ability to contribute all over the field. He uses his excellent vertical and aggressiveness to challenge well in the air.”
Nathan Laboe, junior, midfielder
“Nathan specializes in setting up teammates with his excellent field vision and strong passing ability. He has returned to play after suffering a major leg injury last year.”
Diego Rivera, junior, midfielder
“Diego utilizes his superior speed and stamina to outrun his opponents. Look for him to convert from a more defensive role to an attacking midfielder.”
Christian Romero, junior, midfielder
“Coming off a year’s hiatus, Christian is a solid center midfielder who possesses excellent ball control and consistent playmaking ability.”
Nate Anderson, senior, midfielder/defender
“Nate provides solid, consistent and versatile play and is effective as both a midfielder and a defender because of his high soccer IQ. Look for him to transition from midfielder to more of a defensive role.”
Finn Elsmo, senior, midfielder
“A vocal leader with an excellent understanding of the game, Finn provides positive energy and confidence. He has been perhaps our best facilitator, setting up his teammates with his superior passing ability.”
Richie Hernandez, senior, midfielder/defender
“Richie is a strong, quick, well-conditioned athlete who is able to apply relentless pressure. A versatile player, he has shown he is effective as both an outside midfielder and outside defender.”
Chris Modrzejewski, senior, forward
“He could graduate as the most decorated player in school history. He was named all-conference in 2015 and 2016. He also earned all-sectional honors. He is aiming to break the single-season scoring record of 27 goals set by Nick Kapetanos.”
Chris Troyke, senior, keeper
“Chris is a strong and durable athlete who provided consistent keeper play despite being new to the position. Chris is also a very capable defender who excels at marking up attackers and challenging balls in the air.”
By Patrick Z. McGavin
On a cool, late Friday afternoon last October, St. Patrick made the 3 ½-mile trek from its campus on the city’s northwest side to Norridge to play in one of the most important games in the history of the program.
The Shamrocks ventured there for the championship game of a Class AA Ridgewood Regional against Prosser, a quality Chicago Public League program. The Falcons had won the coveted city title the year before and boasted some skilled and intriguing talent.
St. Patrick played with pace, skill and toughness. Coach Kyle McClure had built to this moment -- forged in setbacks, frustration and incremental progress. This was his third year directing the soccer program. In his first year the Shamrocks won just two games. He conceived a blueprint of utilizing training, technology and year-round play to alter the very foundation and culture of St. Patrick soccer.
“They hired me to make the soccer program more competitive,” said McClure, who played for two legendary high school coaches, Mark Schartner and Kevin Heffernan, at Stevenson.
“St. Patrick had really good players but never really good teams,” he said. “The program was pretty watered down when I got here.”
McClure knew that had to change. Fast forward three years.
Junior forward Chris Modrzejewski, a two-time all-conference player, sparked the run of play and provided the early advantage with a first half goal that ignited the Shamrocks’ 3-0 victory over Prosser.
It was the Shamrocks’ first regional crown in nine years. St. Patrick won back-to-back regionals in 2006 and 2007. From the available information, those appear to be the only two regional titles in school history. Nine years is a lifetime in high school sports, given how fast the game metabolizes and changes.
St. Patrick had a positive to draw on.
Four days later, St. Patrick traveled to Winnemac Stadium in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood to meet Fenwick in a semifinal match of the Amundsen Sectional. The Shamrocks competed well and and worked off the energy and momentum of their growing confidence.
Fenwick ended the Shamrocks’ season by recording the game-winner in the 70th minute of the 2-1 victory. The Friars fell in the final to eventual state champion Latin.
After last season, context was vital. St. Patrick had won just six combined games in McClure’s first two years of reorganizing the program.
In McClure’s third season, the Shamrocks made a breakthrough. The team finished a respectable 11-12-2. Some of their most impressive play happened against elite competition, like a 2-1 regular season loss to Latin, and St. Patrick beefed up its schedule with nine games against Class 3A programs.
“It has been a work in progress for us,” Modrzejewski said. “It is a lot of work, and the progress is showing for sure.”
On June 15, 2017, McClure, his top assistant, Melchor Castro, and his current roster of 19 varsity players are again on the move. They are pushing west to play in a high-profile summer tournament in Burlington, Iowa.
The team has gotten a taste of success but knows there remains vast room for improvement. The Burlington tournament is an important first step, a chance for the players to bond and develop necessary chemistry and closeness. It is also a test, a way for them to measure how far they have come against where they need to be.
“Last season is over, but I think this (tournament) is going to be a test for how much we have progressed from the offseason into the start of summer and going into the new season,” Modrzejewski said.
Rising seniors like Modrzejewski and midfielder Finn Elsmo have the best perspective. Their time at the school corresponds to McClure’s arrival. They have seen the difference.
“Everything is new,” Elsmo said. “I remember coming in as a freshman and hearing guys who were seniors talk about what the program was like before. They said the program was not serious, the players were nonchalant, and nobody really played for real.
“I also remember our very first practice, and coach McClure made it clear that he had high expectations, and he wanted us, players like me and Chris, to get the fundamentals.”
Castro, who coached the lower levels in McClure’s first year and has worked with him the last two years, also has an invaluable perspective and immediate connection to the players and school history.
“Kyle revamped the whole program when he came in,” Castro said. “It is night and day. I played here and graduated from St. Patrick in 2005. The coach that Kyle replaced was my coach my senior year. There was no motivation or unity within the group when I played. Practices were not organized. What Kyle has done is unite the whole program and made it into a family.”
Coaching takes on many forms and shapes, fusing together technical, skill work and training with an intuitive grasp of behavior, actions and work. Young players, McClure recognized, instinctively seek out order and structure. The key is making the game immersive, valuable and thrilling.
“You have to make it enough of an enjoyable experience that the kids want to get better,” McClure said. “What happened here in the past is that the kids would play for 2½ months during the season, and then they would not play the rest of the year. You are not going to be able to compete with the best teams playing only 2½ months.
“In my first year, we had nine varsity seniors and only one of them had played club soccer before. The early challenge was getting the kids to love the game enough, improve on their skills and keep playing in some capacity once the (high school) season was over.”
McClure’s coaching career trajectory is different than the typical high school soccer coach. He is not a teacher at the school. He graduated from law school and helped found a computer company. He coached in Lake County, at the LASC club program and at Warren. He was at the helm of the girls’ program at Regina Dominican in Wilmette when he was hired in the spring of 2014 to take over the Shamrocks’ program.
He adopted a vigorous and progressive interest in new technology. This fall, St. Patrick will become one of the first soccer programs to use a software technology called VidSwap that isolates and breaks down game film in order to produce teachable video instruction and clips for players. Each player will be issued an iPad with the app that will allow them instant access.
“The software allows me as the coach to simply input our roster, and the highlights of each player are automatically catalogued under his name,” McClure explained. “For instance, by clicking on a particular striker’s name, like Chris, it isolates every play during the game he was involved with. By simply clicking another tab, we could isolated those plays to something even more narrow.”
The team’s progress at the beginning of the McClure era was slow. The coaches preached patience.
“These are the stepping stones and this is where we become a force to be reckoned with,” Elsmo said. “Early on, every game we lost we learned something from. And we lost a lot. Kyle wanted to create a competitive environment, and I think now every single kid on the varsity has that competitive drive.”
The players have bought into the coaches’ year-round playing demands. In less than three years, the number of players involved with club has expanded nearly tenfold, according to McClure -- from just four or five players at the start of his tenure to now 40. In his first season, the fall of 2014, 17 of the incoming freshmen played soccer. McClure expects to that number to climb to 40 this year.
“Kids are coming to St Patrick to play soccer, and nobody used to do that,” he said.
Castro is another strong reference point.
“When I played here, just about everybody played organized soccer and then there seemed to be a drop off around 2007,” he said. Not coincidentally, it was the only time the school posted a non-losing record (12-12-1).
“The sport has changed so much. If you are a private school, like we are, parents have to pay a tuition -- it’s not cheap -- you have to find players that fit into the program and the school.
“It has been a tough way to go, especially when we started off with only two wins. The kids bought into a mindset we were offering, and it took over and last year we made a huge jump from the years before. The guys really started to believe. The freshmen have grown and developed so much more. We are only going up.”
With the exception of basketball, no other sport demands such intricate knowledge and self-awareness about how players fit together. McClure is building a sense of unity, closeness and connection.
“I know everybody says this, but it truly is like a family out there,” Elsmo said. “Sometimes at practice, we play games and get loose and have fun, but the very next day we are back, very serious and focused. This environment makes it fantastic to be on and off and the field.”
All the pieces -- the training, playing club and the confidence of last year’s run -- have painted a new picture of optimism and growth. Soccer is a psychologically demanding game. Momentum, confidence and validation are coveted though sometimes deeply elusive properties.
“This program is going to be 35 years old, and we have never had a winning season, as far as I know,” McClure said. “In the past it was more of a recreational program rather than a competitive program. In 34 years we have never finished in the top three of conference.
“These last three years have really been a build up for the next three years. We have 15 returning players and that should give us a big advantage over a lot of teams. We are going to Iowa to see how we stack up against the best high schools in the Midwest.
“We have already talked to the boys that we are going into every game to win this coming fall. We are not just trying to be competitive. In the past we were so used to losing that we’d find a way to lose. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“Now we are expecting to win, and we are finding ways to do that.”
The pride has manifested in other ways. The program earned a coveted award from the NSCAA for academic achievement with a combined team GPA of 3.32.
Part of the next phase is to get stronger and physically fit. Already the signs point in an exciting direction -- the Shamrocks posted consecutive shutouts of University (Chicago) and East Suburban Catholic Conference rival Marist in the Western Summer League organized by St. Ignatius.
It is only the start.
“Moving forward we can always learn so we can become a better team,” Modrzejewski said. “The credit goes to coach McClure. He took a program that was not so serious and now we can compete with the top sports at our school, like football and basketball.”
2017 St. Patrick summer roster
(Player info from coach Kyle McClure, listed by school year)
Angel (Richie) Adame, sophomore, midfielder
“He is a consummate center midfielder who utilizes superior ball control to maintain possession, deliver excellent passes and can shoot and finish with either foot.”
Aaron Moreno-Lopez, sophomore, defender
“Aaron is excellent at cutting off angles and effectively utilizing slide tackles. Although he shines on the defensive side of the ball, Aaron has excellent field vision and strong passing skills.”
Sebastian (Bash) Modrzejewski, sophomore, forward
“He is a crafty and versatile player with the rare ability to play every position on the field. He specializes in using his body position to draw fouls.”
Jonathan Rodriguez, sophomore, defender
“He excels at winning balls in the air. He was the first freshman to be named all-conference in the last eight years. He is also a key ingredient on our free kick and corner kick schemes.”
Luis Angel Saucedo, sophomore, forward
“Luis Angel scored 13 goals last year, and expects to double that this year. He has excellent speed and finishing abilities. He is widely recognized as one of the best 15-year-old strikers in the state.”
Hebert Carrera, junior, midfielder
“Herbert scored in five of our nine conference games, and he has a knack for scoring against the toughest defenses. He is a highly skilled player able to utilize his excellent first touch to set up dangerous scoring opportunities for himself and his teammates.”
Erik Garcia, junior, midfielder
“Erik is a strong, physical athlete with a lot of versatility and ability to contribute all over the field. He uses his excellent vertical and aggressiveness to challenge well in the air.”
Nathan Laboe, junior, midfielder
“Nathan specializes in setting up teammates with his excellent field vision and strong passing ability. He has returned to play after suffering a major leg injury last year.”
Diego Rivera, junior, midfielder
“Diego utilizes his superior speed and stamina to outrun his opponents. Look for him to convert from a more defensive role to an attacking midfielder.”
Christian Romero, junior, midfielder
“Coming off a year’s hiatus, Christian is a solid center midfielder who possesses excellent ball control and consistent playmaking ability.”
Nate Anderson, senior, midfielder/defender
“Nate provides solid, consistent and versatile play and is effective as both a midfielder and a defender because of his high soccer IQ. Look for him to transition from midfielder to more of a defensive role.”
Finn Elsmo, senior, midfielder
“A vocal leader with an excellent understanding of the game, Finn provides positive energy and confidence. He has been perhaps our best facilitator, setting up his teammates with his superior passing ability.”
Richie Hernandez, senior, midfielder/defender
“Richie is a strong, quick, well-conditioned athlete who is able to apply relentless pressure. A versatile player, he has shown he is effective as both an outside midfielder and outside defender.”
Chris Modrzejewski, senior, forward
“He could graduate as the most decorated player in school history. He was named all-conference in 2015 and 2016. He also earned all-sectional honors. He is aiming to break the single-season scoring record of 27 goals set by Nick Kapetanos.”
Chris Troyke, senior, keeper
“Chris is a strong and durable athlete who provided consistent keeper play despite being new to the position. Chris is also a very capable defender who excels at marking up attackers and challenging balls in the air.”