2008 Fire/SouthtownStar Boys Soccer Player of the Year: Alonso Flores, Bloom Township

The raw statistics make an impressive case.

Forty-nine goals this season. One hundred twenty-two for the career.

Scoring prowess alone made Alonso Flores an impressive player. Everything else he did made him the Fire/SouthtownStar 2008 Boys Soccer Player of the Year.

In a season studded with stars, Flores, a senior at Bloom Township, was the brightest of all. He scored and scored and scored, and when he wasn't putting the ball in the net, he was dribbling through opposing players, feeding a teammate or dropping back to defend.

"A true team leader," Bloom Township coach Kelly Gutierrez said.

"He's a player who makes the players around him better," Marian Catholic coach Nassar Shahtaji said. "That player is hard to find."

Flores was a four-year starter, coming along exactly when the Blazing Trojans were in need of a sure-footed scorer.

"It was a little shocking," Flores said of making the varsity immediately. "Everybody was bigger than me. But my spot was open, and I got a starting spot."

For a reason.

"He was one of the better players right out of the box," Gutierrez said. "He'd been playing since he was 5 in the CLASA (Chicago Latin American Soccer Association) group. When he was a freshman, we'd graduated quite a few guys. He was one of four freshmen we pulled up to the varsity. This year, 10 of our 11 starters were seniors from that class."

But, among a quartet that included Jose Estrada, Andrew Alaya and Rene Chavolla, Flores was the standout. Perhaps it was the years of training with his father, Abel, who also played up front in a CLASA adult league.

"He just had a finesse about him," Gutierrez said. "He's always had that, and he's always taken what he does in stride. There's never been an attitude with him."

Flores is soft-spoken. Ask him to pick his best game this season and he'll say, "Against Bremen," but won't say why. You have to ask, and only then he'll tell you that he scored all three goals in a 3-1 victory. And he won't brag about any of his goals. Ask him which was the best of the three, he said, "The first one, because the first is always the toughest."

As Flores developed, so did the Blazing Trojans. As he scored more goals, Bloom won more games. He had 14 goals as a freshman, 19 in his sophomore season, 40 as a junior and 49 this season. That adds up to 122, plus conference titles for the team, plus a raft of individual honors for Flores. He preferred to deflect the spotlight.

"What my teammates did, they started everything," Flores said. "Without them, I can't score."

The admiration society was mutual. Watch a Bloom Township match this season, and you'd see teammates busting down the wing with a potential open shot swivel and feed a pass to Flores, who would fire a shot while covered by a defender or two. Why?

"They wanted to see how many goals he'd score," Gutierrez said.

The happy total of 49 matched the 17th most-productive season in the IHSA record book, and the career total of 122 stands tied for 13th in state prep annals.

Flores, the first pure forward to earn Player of the Year honors since Ned Grabovoy of Lincoln-Way in 1999 and 2000, is trying to decide between Wisconsin-Parkside and Wisconsin-Green Bay for a college career.

"Bloom soccer played a great role in my life," Flores said. "It was four great years, four winning seasons. It feels like everything paid off in the end for me."