The Academy of Holy Angels Girls Soccer team has had a phenomenal season with a regular season record of 15-0-1. The lead scorers for the girls are sophomore Audrey Garton, senior captain Cat Duffy-Shaw, and freshman Elizabeth Mejia. The Stars defeated the #6 state-ranked team, Breck, for Head Coach Dave Marshak’s 200th career win. They have won the Tri-Metro Conference and are currently ranked second in the Class 2A State rankings. The girls have received the first seed in sections and will gain the home advantage for the sections tournament.
The Bank is not far from sight for the girls team—a goal they wished to achieve since last season. Due to COVID-19, the state tournament was cancelled for the 2020 season, never mind the girls’ perfect record and section win that year. Senior Captain Cat Duffy-Shaw says, “Honestly it was pretty sad, I think we had a really strong team . . . our team had been playing together for three years so the chemistry was definitely there.” The 2020 team graduated nine seniors, which makes it seem as though the chemistry would be thrown off in the current 2021 season. Yet the captains have organized many team-bonding activities, including the new players in traditions such as toilet-papering their houses. Each individual had similar goals in mind. As Senior Captain Grace Fitzgibbons says, “The main motto this year was trying to incorporate the younger players since the returning varsity were all pretty close last year.”
Not only the captains have helped the team build chemistry, but the coaches as well. Since the girls may not play very many strong teams during their regular season, the coaches make sure they are challenging each other in practice and assure they are putting in the maximum effort. Yet the coaches don’t just care about what is out on the field. Junior Madden Smith mentions that Assistant Coach Julia Zappa “sends us a survey each day asking us how we are mentally, physically, and how school is going for us.” All of the players agree that the coaches are doing an exceptionally good job at supporting them on and off the field.
As the girls start their section run the week of October 10, the team chemistry needs to be perfected. The goal is to get to the Bank and continue to win, and they have been doing an outstanding job at slowly working not only on this goal but on their individual goals as well. Charlotte Rosen, a sophomore on the team states, “We are all just taking it a game at a time.” The state quarterfinals were October 26–28 and we will see the girls at the Bank for the finals, November 3–6.
