Head Coach
TJ Mabie
T.J. returns in 2011 for his 9th season with LLCC. His first year as the Head Coach for the
LLCC Men’s Soccer Team. T.J. began his soccer career by playing 10 years of club
soccer for the Springfield Magic and Springfield Strikers. He also was a two-year
member of the Illinois Olympic Development State Team. T.J. attended Southeast High
School where he was a varsity player all four years and was named All-Sectional in his
Junior and senior years and All-Conference all four years. He was the team’s leading
scorer his senior year. T.J. also was a two-year member of the Springfield Spirits Semi-
Pro Indoor Soccer team.
After high school, T.J. attended Springfield College in Illinois where he was a member of
the 1998 third place team at the National Soccer Tournament in New Jersey. He attended
Lincoln Land his sophomore year, where he was a captain and a member of the 2000
Collegiate Conference of Central Illinois Championship Team. T.J. finished his Junior
and Senior years of college at the University of Illinois at Springfield where, in his senior
year, he participated in the national tournament in Bowling Green, KY.
Assistant Coach
Rene Troppa
René Troppa was born and raised in Berlin, Germany. The son of a professional soccer player, Troppa began playing soccer at age 5 for BFC Dynamo - which later became FC Berlin after the fall of The Wall in 1989 - and attended the Werner Seelenbinder School of Sport. In 1995, Troppa came to Springfield as a foreign exchange student. He played only five games for Lanphier High School under the coaching of Patrick Phillips before an injury sidelined him for the season. In his five-game high school career, Troppa scored five goals and had five assists, which caught the eye of then-SCI men’s soccer coach, Tom Noonan. Troppa received a full soccer scholarship to SCI where he scored a total of 15 goals and had 29 assists during his two years on the team. He was also honored as an NSCAA First Team All-American player and was named to the NJCAA All-Region 24 Team. Troppa then received a full soccer scholarship to UIS, where he played under Aydin Gonulsen. Troppa scored nine goals and had 19 assists during his two years on the team. Over the past five years, Troppa has played for several elite men’s league teams in Milwaukee, WI and Columbus, OH, and has been coaching youth and competitive soccer since 1999. He is a trainer for the Springfield Area Soccer Association (SASA).