Lane girls soccer paves the way for future with fourth-place finish in Class 3A

By Michael Wojtychiw

The Lane Tech girls soccer team has made a lot of history this season.

First CPS team to make three consecutive sectional finals in the state’s highest class (Lane made history with their second trip last year but extended the streak in 2025).

First team to win a Class 3A sectional.

First CPL team – regardless of class – to win a supersectional and make it to state.

It made another bit of history Saturday, June 7, when it took on Barrington in the Class 3A third-place game at North Central College in Naperville. Despite going up 1-0 on a Grace Carman goal in the first minute, the Fillies would come back to defeat the Champions 2-1, sending the Chicago team home with the first-ever team trophy won by a CPL school, a fourth-place plaque.

“It’s very difficult right now to think this is our last game together,” Lane keeper Cynthia Waller said.

“I have mixed feelings. We’ve accomplished so much, and even though we lost today, it’s been something we’ll all have forever. But it’s like I want it all to continue in order to be around just an amazing group of friends and players for a little while longer.”

“This has been an incredible season and career for all the seniors on the team,” Lane defender Olive Tinucci said.

“I just love everyone on this team — great teammates and friends. To have a season like this one is something that I will never forget.

“It’s been great to be a part of a great season. Advancing to state was one of our goals. To be able to realize that and do something never done before at Lane is something to really be proud of.”

It was only fitting for the girls team to make it to the state finals, especially after the boys team made CPL history of its own when it played for a state title in the fall, ultimately losing in the title game to Hersey on penalty kicks.

Both Waller and Tinucci admitted there wasn’t much of a rivalry with the boys team or the thought of ‘oh, we need to match them,’ but they did appreciate that not only were members from the boys team at their games this past weekend, but so were athletes from different sports and students throughout the school. The fact that the entire school and local community got behind them as they made their postseason run was something that helped fuel them.

“We had a number of our friends that were here cheering us on, but I really thnik we did this for ourselves, for our teammates and team,” Waller said.

“I think it wasn’t a competition with the boys soccer team, it was more of trying to make Lane soccer as a whole the best it could be and showcase to the state we’re a real threat,” Tinucci said. “Seeing their run showed us it was possible and then having their support was amazing because they just wanted to see us win.”

In the previous two seasons, Lane had seen its season come to an end at the hands of New Trier in the sectional final, 2-0 last year and 1-0 two years ago. Coming into the season, one of the goals the team had, besides winning city, winning a sectional and hopefully making a run into the last weekend of the season, was to finally defeat the Trevians.

With the talented team they had returning, the Lane coaching staff decided to enter the Naperville Invitational, one of the state’s top two or three in-season tournaments, one full of state contenders. That was already on top of playing in the Lou Malnati’s Deep Dish Classic, also one of the top two or three in-season tournaments. Three of the four Class 3A Final Four teams – including Lane – played in the Naperville Invitational.

It was during the Naperville Invite that Tinucci realized her team had a chance to truly make a run that the program had never seen before.

“My exact moment was when we beat New Trier in PKs in the Naperville Invite,” she said. “Our seasons have been ended the past two seasons to New Trier and we’ve played them in the regular season and we’ve always lost.

“That was a tough game that gave us hope and the want to look to the future, to look past New Trier. It wasn’t like New Trier was the stopping block, it was just the get-go. That was the point we just started to pick it up and go, go go, let’s win.”

What the team did this season was not lost on the two seniors, both of whom will be playing collegiately next season. Waller signed with Sacramento State earlier this year, becoming Lane’s first Division I recruit since Scout Murray signed with Ohio University four years ago. Tinucci will be playing at Lewis University, while teammate Carman will hone her skills at Brandeis University.

“I’ll remember this for the rest of my life,” Waller said. “I’ll remember showing up for graduation late after our supersectional game.

“We’ve had other teams come and cheer us on, even friends at other schools. It’s a sense of pride. We’re from the city, we have to represent the city.”

“We have friends on our club teams who are from the suburbs and we’ll get into it with them, bicker with each other but it’s all with love,” Tinucci said. “We’ll go out and support them in a big game and the support has been great from throughout the city.

“We would post something on Instagram to represent the city and we showed pretty well.”

Nine seniors graduate from this year’s roster, including three players who were four-year varsity roster members in Carman, Waller and Tinucci.

Fellow seniors Luzmarie Razo, Alyssa LoVerde and Jessica Carlson are three-year varsity players and while it all may be a bit early to realize what the legacy they’re leaving might be, all hope that what they’ve been able to do is just a stepping stone for the future. Players like freshman Rebecca LoVerde, and sophomores Sylvia Cervenka and Lila Massey, were all starters this year and learned valuable lessons from their upperclassman teammates.

“The immediate legacy…there’s a lot of very talented players and all the underclassmen have a really high ceiling, so I think immediate legacy is being good role models and showing them that if you believe in yourself and have good camaraderie, you can go a long way,” Waller said. “There’s always been great culture at Lane soccer, especially on the varsity team and I think that will continue. We can kind of be the real deal.”

“I don’t know if it sets expectations for further teams, but it sets a goal and shows them that those goals are realistic and can happen,” Tinucci said. “Those underclassmen have so much more capacity to become even greater players than they already are and I can’t wait to see the future of them come together.

“This was the tightest-knit team we’ve ever had. There’s wasn’t a freshman group, a junior group, it was all of us together. Yes, we’re taking nine seniors, but there’s still 15 that want to keep it going.”

Photos by Hannah Henderson/OSA