Lakeland Christian remains too strong, wins 14th straight girls soccer district title
LAKELAND — Well, Santa Fe Catholic could not turn back the clock to 2010 and pull off the upset over Lakeland Christian. While the Crimson Hawks certainly are an up-and-coming team, the Vikings still are too strong and have a deeper pool of talent.
Lakeland Christian’s depth was on display by having a different player score each goal in its 5-0 victory on Thursday night in the Class 2A, District 7 girls soccer championship game at Viking Stadium.
The victory gave Lakeland Christian (18-3-1) its 14th consecutive district championship.
“I’ve wanted this one more than I’ve wanted one in awhile,” LCS coach Jason Streets said. “We came into the season with a lot of people doubting that we could be the top team again. So our goals were we wanted to win the county league and go undefeated in the county.”
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Lakeland Christian won the Champions League, and Santa Fe Catholic won the Premier League. The county is split based on rankings and teams can move up or down between leagues from year to year based on how they do.
One major factor in Lakeland Christian not being an upset victim is, despite being a three-time state champion, players and coaches alike respect their opponents.
“Santa Fe was definitely an intimidating team just from watching them play and how physical they were so, we were definitely a little nervous at the start, I will say,” senior KJ Straub said. “And respect to them, they defended so well and played so hard. So it was awesome to play them.”
Lakeland Christian’s scoring depth showed in that neither Straub, whose late-season surge made her the Vikings' leading scorer with 17 goals, nor Mari Carr, who is second with 16 goals, scored.
Ella Williams scored the only goal in the first half when goalkeeper Mackenzie Marotz’s long clear allowed Williams to get behind the defense on a breakaway and score.
It stayed that way until just before the second-half water break, when LCS scored three goals in just over five minutes, including two in just over a minute. Kyleigh Coleman scored the first goal of the second half off a corner kick. Alyssa Carroll, who continues to get stronger as she recovers from an ankle injury, drilled a shot from about 25 yards out then set up Ellie Cox with a beautiful feed.
Abby Sampson closed out the scoring in the final minute.
“That’s kind of how we have been,” Streets said. “We’ll go in lulls and then we get a couple of goals and it kind of loosens them up.”
Santa Fe Catholic battled and had a couple of corner kicks when it was still 0-0 but didn’t have many strong scoring chances as the game progressed.
“Hats off to Santa Fe,” Streets said. “I thought Santa Fe played us very, very hard. They made everything difficult. In the first half, they were winning most of the 50-50 balls. And then to have your goalie go out on that play and to keep it tight for as long as they did was remarkable. It took us scoring on a couple of really good shots to loosen them up. That is a team that could make the regional finals. We could see them again.”
This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Lakeland Christian wins 14th straight girls soccer district title
