EFFINGHAM — Calvin Schnabel has made many big saves for the Teutopolis Wooden Shoes this season, but maybe none have been as clutch as the ones he grabbed against Champaign St. Thomas More on Saturday.

    With the Shoes up 2-1 late in the second half, Schnabel made two that helped lift T-Town to victory over the previously undefeated Sabers.

    “He does it every game,” Teutopolis head coach Dustin Jansen said. “He’s definitely a huge part of this team’s success.”

    With eight minutes and 17 seconds left in the game, St. Thomas (12-1-2) kicked a hard shot from outside the box that looked like an inevitable goal. But Schnabel got a hand on it and came down with the ball after it hit the crossbar.

    “It came off my hands, I tipped it up and it hit the crossbar and then came back out into my hands,” Schnabel said of the incredible save.

    Of course, just a few inches up and the ball would have gone in and tied the game.  But thanks to Schabel’s quick reaction time, the lead was preserved.

    “He popped that ball up and reacted fast enough to get it out of there,” Jansen said.

    Schnabel made another save earlier that was almost all skill.

    Shortly after Teutopolis’ Trent Gebben scored the go-ahead goal with 18 minutes left, the Sabers’ Yoon Dong Shin had an excellent look with a wide open field and legged a hard shot toward Schabel. The T-Town keeper, not missing a beat, dove to his right and the ball bounced off his fingertips and harmlessly away.

    Crisis averted, and the Shoes (7-6-1) would hold on for a key win against a strong St. Thomas squad.

    “Our defense probably had one of the better games they had all year,” Jansen said. “We outran them out there all day. And St. Thomas is no joke of a team by any means.”

    The game was even going into halftime. Teutopolis struck first on a goal by Chad Goldstein with 21:47 left in the first, but St. Thomas’ John Tabb scored the equalizer with 17 minutes remaining in the half.

    St. Thomas head coach Dave Cox said that with the way the Shoes played in the second half, they deserved the win.

    “In the second half we werent getting the shots in like we need to do,” he said.  “Although we had good penetration into the box, we just couldn’t pull the trigger. And they had a few good runaway plays that worked really well for them.”

    Jansen agreed, saying that the Shoes didn’t stray from their game plan — and they didn’t make as many mistakes as they did in a win over Charleston earlier in the week.

    “We beat [Charleston] but we definitley had some very rookie mistakes in that game,” he said.  “We really only had one mistake in this game and they capitalized on it when they scored.”

    Luckily, the Shoes were able to capitalize on the Sabers’ defensive lapses, especially in the second half.

    Gebben’s goal came with 18 minutes left in the game. He was 35 yards out and wide open, so he lifted the ball easily. The wind took care of the rest, neatly lilting it up and and placing it over the keeper’s head like an invisible hand.

    From there, the T-Town defense — and Schnabel — did the job.

    “We had about 10 to15 minutes where they possessed the ball more than we did, but we got right back on our game,” Jansen said. “I’d say 90 percent of the time we had posession of the ball (in the second half), and we kept it down here.”

    In previous games, Jansen said, the Shoes had trouble keeping foused during the final few minutes. Not so Saturday.

    “We’ve had problems the past three, four minutes of games, where we get nervous, start making bad passes,” Jansen said. “But (Saturday), we kept our head in the game, and we kept playing our game like we had been for the past 70-75 minutes. We finished that game stronger than any game we’ve had against such good competition like this.”

    Cox said he was very pleased with the caliber of competition T-Town brought to the game.

    “I think the teams were very, very even,” he said. “Both state competition-claiber teams. We typically don’t see too many of the teams down this way, so we like to come down here and play (against Teutopolis) and it’s always been a good match.”

    Teutopolis travels to Mount Zion for their next match, which will be Tuesday afternoon.