The U-14 and U-16 Girls Storm teams gave Ponte Vedra two Championships on the girls side out of six age groups. Ponte Vedra is the smallest club ever to have two State Champions in one year.
U14 Girls Team
In May 2008, the U-13 Girls Storm team became the first team to represent Ponte Vedra Soccer as a State Champion. At that time Ponte Vedra was recognized as the smallest club to win a State Championship.
Earning that victory placed this year’s team — now a U-14 team — in the Region III Premier League where they would face State Champs and runners up to State Champs from four different states in their own elite league of play. Injuries and conflicts for the players with other sports proved to take a toll as the team only placed in the middle of the pack in that league play.
State Cup play started in March and the team refocused to start their march toward defending the State Cup Championship. When the bracketing came out after the first weekend of play, the team was pleased to see that the main competition in the state, Brandon Soccer Club, was in the other bracket.
After winning during the first two rounds of State, the team made it to the Final Four held in West Palm Beach May 16 and 17.
The team felt confident that the match on Saturday would be a game it could win easy. After 14 shots on net for the Storm team in the first half, the team found itself tied 0-0 at half time. The speech to the team during half time was simple. No mistakes.
Coaches explained that in soccer the best team does not always win and weaker teams often win based on a sole mistake by the other team.
A missed defensive assignment put the Storm team down 1-0 with less than 10 minutes left in the game. Lucky for the team, Taylor Valentine ended up at the top of the 18 box with the ball and ripped a shot through traffic and in to the back of the net. At the end of regulation play, Boca and Ponte vedra were tied 1-1. Twenty minutes of overtime proved fruitless as both teams blew great opportunities and neither scored, which led to penalty kicks to determine who would move forward to the championship game Sunday morning.
The Storms keeper Katie Nimitz proved way too much for Boca, making diving saves on two of their five shots giving Ponte Vedra the win 4-3 at the end of PK’s.
Sunday’s final worked out as many had thought, placing the #1 Storm team against the #2 Brandon team.
The pregame speech again was simple as the coaches had scouted the Brandon team and knew that their main weakness was in their keeper. Although solid, she had a tendency to misplay hard shots and leave the ball on the ground. So they preached to the players to crash the net after all shots.
At the 12 minute mark, Mallory Baine blasted a ball from the 18, the keeper misplayed the ball and it bounced out in the direction of Brooke Sharpe who was already on her way to the net and played a simple square foot shot of the rebound into the side netting.
Both teams missed on great opportunities and the match, after 10 minutes of agonizing "stoppage time" added to the clock, ended 1-0 Ponte Vedra, giving the team back to back state championships!
