Last year, the Southwest Christian girls soccer team got its first-ever taste of competing in a state tournament, but fell short in the semifinals. Instead of entering this fall with that loss pinned on a vision board as motivation, head coach Mark Anderson said they largely tried to ignore it.
“We don’t talk a lot about winning,” Anderson said. “We talk about playing a certain way and approaching the game a certain way.”
The chance of booking back-to-back trips was impossible to ignore as the No. 1 Stars finished regulation and overtime tied 0-0 against No. 3 Watertown-Mayer in the Class 1A Section 6 final last Tuesday.
“I’d be lying to you if I said I wasn’t thinking about state at that point,” Anderson said. “What I tell every single [one of the] 22 players, ‘Every one of you from 12 yards away can hit an eight-yard-by-eight-foot goal.’”
And All-State goalkeeper Saraphina Bettin can save one of those shots. She clinched the team’s penalty shootout win to continue Southwest Christian’s undefeated 17-0-1 season. The Stars, seeded first, will face Pine Island/Zumbrota-Mazeppa on Thursday at Eden Prairie.
A tight draw isn’t common for the Stars. This season, they outscored opponents 87-6 and won by three or more goals in all but three of their games. Four players have reached double-digit goals this season: Maya Johnson, Isabella Travis, Gisella Harder and Aubrey Burkhart. Travis, Johnson and Burkhart also earned Class 1A All-State honors, and Harder is an indispensable midfielder who plays from first to final whistle and “never stops running,” said Anderson.
The Stars likely won’t get that margin of victory at state. To prepare for closer games against stiff competition, the team breaks the season into chunks and tries to set goals, rather than just score them. Pass and control the ball. Switch the field. Control the space.
“At first, the kids didn’t like that, because they just wanted to keep going forward,” Anderson said. “I explained to them that it’s worth three or four or five practices to actually be in live competition.”
