No Denying Timko in Run to 100 Goals
April 9, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
The grinding force of Taylor Timko's attacks on the soccer goal comes out in her coach Jim Stachura’s voice as he describes them.
It’s not so much something technical – although the Pontiac Notre Dame Prep senior has plenty of skill – but more a mix of athleticism, vision and drive that sets the all-state midfielder apart from most in Michigan this spring.
“And the more and more she gets denied something she wants,” Stachura said, “the more and more she’ll try it.”
In a word – is “relentless” the right one?
“That was our team word last year,” Timko answered, noting the irony of the question.
“Relentless” can have a negative connotation, meaning strict or harsh. But this is relentless in a good way – determined, unyielding, and at times unstoppable.
On Tuesday, Timko became the 41st player in MHSAA girls soccer history to score 100 goals, netting three in Notre Dame Prep's 6-0 win over Madison Heights Bishop Foley.
She has 13 goals in six games this season, to go with 39 goals as a junior, 29 as a sophomore and 21 as a freshman.
“The best part of soccer is definitely scoring. I think it’s cool that that’s the point of the game,” Timko said. “If you have a shot, I say definitely take it. It’s like anything; if there’s an opportunity there, take it and run with it. It’s kind of a motto, I guess.”
She’s made the most of many as she enters the heart of her final high school spring.
Timko made headlines this fall as the kicker for a Notre Dame Prep football team that finished a solid 8-3 with help from her left leg. She was named Homecoming Queen, accepting the crown in football uniform during halftime of the Fighting Irish’s Sept. 27 game against Detroit Loyola.
She’s also a decorated track standout, as a freshman taking third in the 400 meters and running on the fourth-place 1,600 relay at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Final, then running on the third-place 1,600 relay as a sophomore. And she’s a nearly straight-A student, even as AP calculus is making that pursuit a little tougher of late.
But soccer certainly is her best game, and her impressive scoring totals have come against some of the toughest competition in Michigan. Last season’s schedule included the top-two ranked teams in Division 2 – Detroit Catholic League cross-division rivals Livonia Ladywood and Bloomfield Hills Marian – plus another top-10 Division 3 team in Ann Arbor Gabriel Richard and eventual Division 1 champion Troy.
But Timko and classmate Lindsey Klei keyed an offense attack that drove the Irish all the way to the Division 3 championship game – which despite a 1-0 loss to Grand Rapids South Christian made prophetic a conversation Stachura had with a coaching friend as Timko was just about to take off on her 100-goal career four years ago.
“He said, you know, when you get someone who’s going to score 20 goals for you, you’re going to play in a state final,” Stachura recalled. “Just having a goal scorer like that gives you the missing link. We've always had some good players ... but getting the girls to rally around her has been a big key.”
After the 21-goal debut, Stachura thought Timko’s total might fall some the next season because Notre Dame Prep graduated two all-staters including now-Oakland University contributor Katrina Stencel. But Timko scored eight more that spring than the one before, and then upped her total another 10 goals in 2013 – even as the schedule was toughened.
Many of those goals have come on her go-to move, a fake right and cut to a shot with her left foot. She likes headers too – admitting, a little tongue-in-cheek perhaps, that at 5-foot-7, “I've got hops,” she said.
Timko also has three assists this season and 39 for her career, and should push to end up among the MHSAA career points leaders as well before this spring is done.
“Thinking back to my freshman year, I never had specific goals of what I wanted to accomplish. Just everyday stuff on the field – at practice being the best player type of things,” Timko said. “Even for a particular season, I didn't say I want to score 20 goals this year; it’s more game to game goals.
“It’s such a blessing how far we've been able to come, and the things we've been able to accomplish. I can honestly say I never expected this.”
But she’s played a huge part in – as Stachura said earlier this year – setting a standard both on the field and in her school.
Timko will head to the University of Michigan this fall to play soccer but also because she’s an outstanding and hard-working student. Her childhood aspiration was to become a veterinarian, but she’s leaning now toward something in the medical or kinesiology fields – “somewhere I could help people,” she said.
She’s a member of the National Honor Society, Students Against Destructive Decisions and her school’s Varsity Club, and serves as a student ambassador for Notre Dame Prep and math tutor to classmates.
“She’s somebody both the boys and girls can look up to – the guys give her street cred because she played football, and the girls see a great athlete and a role model,” Notre Dame Prep assistant athletic director Dean Allen said. “Some kids maybe in general get big heads on their shoulders, as stud athletes. But she's really humble."
Football was “inspiring,” allowing Timko as the kicker to observe the intensity she works to bring to the soccer field. She also learned a valuable lesson about pressure – what it takes to come through when, as a football kicker, she had only one shot at the goal and only a few seconds to execute.
Timko is loving serving as soccer captain for a third straight season, especially as she gets to share those duties with classmates Klei, Bella Galloway and Lauren Gunterman.
And that lesson in pressure could pay off big as she and the Irish continue pursuing the one prize they were denied at the end of last season.
Remember what Stachura said about when Timko gets denied?
“Relentless is definitely a way to live,” Timko said. “Everyone faces obstacles, and there are easy solutions too. But you have to keep pushing through.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Pontiac Notre Dame Prep’s Taylor Timko moves the ball upfield during last season’s Division 3 Final. (Middle) Timko (22), with her teammates and coach Jim Stachura, pose with the congratulatory sign she received from them after scoring her 100th career goal Tuesday. (Middle photo courtesy of Pontiac Notre Dame Prep High School.)
TC West's Wheelock Still 'Living My Dreams' as CMU Assistant Soccer Coach
By
Tom Spencer
Special for MHSAA.com
July 22, 2025
Keyton Wheelock has experienced soccer in several states since she earned her way into the MHSAA record books playing goalie for Traverse City West.
Wheelock, who once owned the career and single season shutout records in Michigan, has traveled extensively to play and coach.
But today’s she’s all but home and still coaching women’s college soccer.
“Hometown roots, hometown kid — that would be my thing,” Wheelock said this summer while sitting on a bench memorializing her grandparents in a park near where she grew up. “It’s lights out coming back here. This will always be home.”
Wheelock, now coaching at Central Michigan University, conducted her youth soccer camp this summer at Long Lake Township Park, the home of some of her favorite childhood memories. The area is also still home to most of her family.
“This area means so much to me, and I want to keep coming back and giving a little bit of soccer back,” Wheelock said, noting drives home of 16 hours from South Dakota and Alabama and 12 from Tennessee and Minnesota. “This is home to me, no matter where I've been, and now I'm only two and a half hours away. This has always been home. These people always have my back. My grandparents lived here. My parents lived here and still live here, and they will live here the rest of their lives in this area.”
Wheelock, a 2004 TC West grad, set the career shoutout mark at 61 with a win at Cheboygan in May of her senior spring. She also had the most shutouts recorded in a single season, 18, during her junior year. Both marks have since been surpassed. Her career shutout mark remains No. 4 all-time, however. The single season mark is tied for sixth on the all-time list.
Both still stand as records at West, where Wheelock was coached by Jason Carmien, now the school’s athletic director. Carmien found it hard to believe Wheelock graduated 20 years ago as he reflected on her passion for the sport.
“Keyton’s family was unbelievably supportive, and that determination to follow her soccer path still exists today,” Carmien pointed out. “She was an outstanding goalkeeper at West and has had an impressive coaching career. I was glad to see her land at CMU — she has certainly thrived there with the Chips.”
Wheelock played high school soccer during the earliest days of social media, so the postings that would follow her accomplishments if they occurred now didn’t really exist. But she vividly recalls the pressure her local newspaper and television stations inadvertently applied as she got closer to the career mark.
“The record for career shutouts in high school was something that I chased all the way through my senior year, and it was one of those things we knew it was going to come,” she said. “It felt so stressful at the time in high school. … Everybody kept asking, ‘When are you going to break it?’ It was just was a matter of time.”
It was far from easy, but she did it with the help of a strong defense.
“I had a great defensive line in front of me doing their job to cut my angles and make my job easy,” Wheelock said. “We had some rough games that we should have won — either we gave up a PK in it and I couldn't save the PK or, you know, I made some mistakes and didn't hold the clean sheet.”
After leaving West, Wheelock played in two seasons at South Dakota University. She played out the remainder of her eligibility for Concordia in St. Paul, Minn, before getting into coaching.
Her college playing days were injury-marred, and her playing career ended with an injury suffered at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif.
“It was kind of like a tryout-type thing with the U.S. system out there,” Wheelock recalled. “I came back, finished out my degree and started coaching because I knew at that point I wasn't going to be able to play anymore.”
Her first college coaching job was a five-year stint as assistant coach for Tusculum College in Tennessee. She then was an assistant at South Alabama for three seasons.
Before her 30th birthday, Wheelock got the opportunity to become a head coach at a Division I school, Louisiana Monroe. She was named Sun Belt Conference Coach of the Year in 2016 after leading her team to its first conference tournament appearance.
“You know, when you're not 30 and you get an opportunity to be a DI coach, you kind of take it,” Wheelock said. “And I jumped on it.”
Wheelock spent four years at Louisiana Monroe before the pandemic resulted in her returning to Michigan and finding the vacancy at CMU.
She is thrilled to see how the landscape in women’s athletics has changed for the better, with growth in numbers, skills and support for high school and college programs.
“Women's sports have taken off — there's so many opportunities out there for women now,” Wheelock excitedly said. “At the end of the day, women's sports matter, and there's enough people out there now pushing that forward.”
The record-setting keeper credits the U.S. women’s national team’s performance during the 1999 World Cup for putting women's soccer on the map.
Wheelock attended one of the U.S. team’s games – a 7-1 victory over Nigeria in Chicago. With a few members of her family as well as teammates Jackie Keller and Bree Hall, Wheelock saw U.S. goalie Briana Scurry make one of her 137 international appearances – this one taking place just a few matches before Scurry’s memorable world championship penalty kick performance. Nigeria did get one past Scurry for the game’s first goal, Wheelock recalled.
“My uncle was able to get us tickets, and we actually had front row seats to that game at Soldier Field — and it was a phenomenal atmosphere,” Wheelock said of the event drawing more than 65,000 fans. “It was unbelievable to all of a sudden see it at a women’s sporting event.”
Wheelock had some hopes of playing for the national team and professional soccer right up to her career-ending injury. She admitted she would have loved to continue to play, but notes she’s found a home in coaching.
“I'm living my dreams,” she said. “Obviously I would have loved to play professional, but injuries happen. And, I was never the tallest goalkeeper out there. Lots of people said I wasn't going to be able to do what I did, because I was pretty short.”
Relationships with past coaches and past and current players have brought her just as much satisfaction as playing. And she’s happy to give back to the game.
“This game has given so much to me,” she said. “And for me to give a little bit back to it is what I want. I can't imagine doing anything else.”
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PHOTOS (Top) At left, Keyton Wheelock makes a save for Traverse City West; at right, Wheelock plays keeper during her youth camp this summer. (Middle) Wheelock, now an assistant at Central Michigan. (Below) Wheelock, far right, cheers on the U.S. national team in Chicago in 1999. (Youth camp photo by Tom Spencer, CMU photo courtesy of CMU; all other photos courtesy of Keyton Wheelock.)