Stoppage time: Wilmington’s Travis Ivanoff ready for final season of coaching career ... for now

Wilmington soccer has seen some wild times in the past eight years. The boys haven’t fielded a team since 2021, while the girls have grown from a winless program to a competitive one. Travis Ivanoff has been around for all of it in one capacity or another, and he’ll be around this year for the girls season as well.

It’s still possible he’ll be around in some capacity after that, but as the head coach for the Wildcats, this will be his final season on the sidelines.

Ivanoff intends to temporarily retire at the end of the girls soccer season to focus on his daughter’s playing career at Lincoln-Way Central. He’ll remain at Wilmington as a teacher.

“With my daughter starting high school next year, there’s only a limited amount of time I’ll get to watch her,” Ivanoff said. “I told our administrators that I didn’t think it was fair to the district for me to miss varsity games as the head coach to watch my daughter, nor was it fair for my daughter for me to miss her games to coach another team.

“The administration has been more than understanding of my decision, as tough as it’s been.”

A 1998 graduate of Peotone, Ivanoff has been coaching in some capacity since 2003. He started out coaching wrestling and soccer at St. Martin’s High School before heading to Peotone for 11 years. He came to Wilmington in 2016 and served as the boys coach from 2019-2022.

He technically still serves in that role, though the Wolves have been unable to field a team since the 2021-22 season. For the girls, he’s been the head man in charge since 2019.

There have been plenty of highs throughout his tenure, with the boys winning a regional championship in 2016 and the girls reaching the regional championship game last year. He was a finalist for the IHSSCA Soccer Person of the Year in 2019 and has seen the girls program grow leaps and bounds from where it started.

“When I started here at WHS, we didn’t score a goal, let alone win/tie a game in the past (several) years. ...” he said. “We’ve got back-to-back Bodyarmour Championships (2023 and 2024), a 10-10-1 record in 2024 advancing to the regional championship and have 41 wins with me on the coaching staff, 30 of which came as head coach.”

Ivanoff expressed gratitude to Kevin Cavenaile for restarting the soccer program at Wilmington. He also expressed gratitude to Jose Smith and Haley Wendling Hooper for their support.

Ivanoff pointed out that Wilmington has seen recent success at the next level with Rachel Wandless (Loras College) and Alexa Clark (Trinity Christian College). The Wolves also have a current star on the roster in senior midfielder Alaina Clark, who scored 30 goals last year and has 69 in her career. She’s committed to North Central College.

In the offseason, Ivanoff runs soccer camps for the U6-U18 boys and girls in Wilmington and is a club coach for Legacy Soccer Club in New Lenox.

He says he may still be involved with the Wilmington program next year, even if just on a volunteer basis. It’s still to be determined what his role will look like, though he hopes to help the boys program get back up again in the fall.

No matter what, he’ll always be one of the Wolves' biggest supporters.

“I’m still gonna hang around and cheer on the girls,” Ivanoff said. “I told them I’m going to be their biggest, most annoying fan on the sidelines cheering for them.”