Boylan looks to finish girls soccer season strong after head coach slips away to give birth

The Boylan girls are soaring into the last phase of the regular season, aiming for their ninth NIC-10 championship in the past 11 years to go along with another postseason push.

And while they will have to do the rest of it without their head coach Taylor Meyers, who just gave birth to her first child — a 7-pound, 4-ounce healthy baby boy named Brooks Lay — the Titans are trying to give her something else to be proud of in the form of a big finish to the year.

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"Our timing wasn't really perfect, but our girls are getting pretty good at dealing with pregnant coaches," the seventh-year Boylan head coach, Meyers, said. "But I hope having me there for that long helped give them a little push, and now they can really go out there and keep going and going."

The Titans could call themselves the best postseason team out of the Rockford area for the past decade, and certainly of late. Boylan made it to super-sectionals as one of the Elite 8 teams in Class 2A two years ago and advanced to the sectional finals before getting derailed last postseason.

But last year's team graduated seven seniors, including the NIC-10 MVP Maggie Schmidt and two other first-team all-conference stars. This year's team had to reload on the fly and do it with their head coach late in her pregnancy.

No big deal.

"It really wasn't," Boylan's starting goalie, Natalya Razo, said. "It's been a crazy season, and it's just flown by. But the coaches have handled it so perfectly... When Coach Taylor had to leave, Kiley (Beck) stepped right in."

Meyers and Beck were Titans' stars in their time and assistant coach Beck had a baby boy on June 21, 2023, just days after their season ended last year. So both coaches and many players were well acquainted with the process.

"At least we should have plenty of babysitters someday," Beck said. "And they've just been great, to both of us, this whole way.

"We always kind of grab on to a theme or something, and right now it's: 'Play for Taylor, and play for Baby.'"

Meyers coached Boylan (10-3-2, 5-0 NIC-10) until the day before Brooks was born. Then Beck and the rest of the assistant coaches took over. The Titans fell 2-1 to Warren Township but they have posted 1-0 wins over NIC-10 rival Hononegah and Sycamore since.

And Boylan has won nine of its last 10 games overall. There are certainly some big games coming up, though.

"We know pretty much everybody circles their games against us on the schedule, but we don't mind," Beck said. "These girls have a humble confidence to them. Nothing gets to them."

They were scheduled to travel to Harlem on Thursday, but late-season games at Guilford (on Tuesday) and versus Freeport (next Thursday) will most likely decide the NIC-10 title this year. Belvidere North and Hononegah both just had one conference loss each headed into their head-to-head matchup on Thursday night. Guilford and Freeport each have two.

Then it's postseason time. All three classes begin regional play next Friday.

Meyers and (she says "maybe") baby Brooks will be watching from somewhere.

"Oh, I'll find a way, I have to watch," Meyers said. "And I'm confident that this group knows what it needs to do, and will get it done. I have no doubts they're going to continue to be successful for the rest of the season."

Jay Taft is a Rockford Register Star sports reporter. Email him at jtaft@rrstar.com and follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @JayTaft. Sign up for the Rockford High School Sports Newsletter here at rrstar.com. Jay has covered a variety of sports, from the Chicago Bears and Blackhawks to local youth sports, since the turn of the century at the Register Star.

This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Boylan coach Taylor Meyers leaves team in good hands after having baby