CINCINNATI — What a way to close out your youth soccer career.
For the members of the U15 New England Futbol Club (NEFC) North Shore Girls 2008 team, they did so in style – and on top – defeating California’s FRAM SC, 2-1 in the finals of the U15 Development Player League (DPL) national championship tournament on Saturday at the Voice of America Athletic Complex in West Chester, Ohio.
The match was back-and-forth from the get-go. Knotted at 1-1 with about three minutes left in regulation, Nahant’s Sophie Skabeikis, a rising sophomore at St. Mary’s Lynn, was pulled down in the box and awarded a penalty kick. Skabeikis wasted no time in drilling the game-winner home and setting off a wild celebration. She also set up NEFC’s first goal, with a perfectly played corner kick to Sylvia Guarracino about 15 minutes into the game to stake NEFC to a 1-0 halftime lead.
“The game was really so close the whole time. It was so intense and we put up a good fight, but I was really nervous,” Skabeikis said. “Coach (Dushawne “Doc” Simpson) gave me the option to take it and I knew I wanted it and knew I could do it. I had converted one last year in the semifinals on the 2007 team, so I was nervous but confident. After that, we just had to drop back into defensive mode. We were all tired but we knew we had to secure the defense for one more minute because we knew this was our last chance.”
NEFC’s home base is Hamilton’s Pingree School, where Simpson, the current director of coaching at NEFC and former assistant coach of the Boston Breakers, has coached the varsity girls team since 2011. Simpson said NEFC is fortunate to be able to draw talent from many North Shore communities including, among others, Lynnfield, Marblehead, Swampscott and Nahant.
“We do get players from as far away as New Hampshire and even Maine, but this team is mainly North Shore area kids,” Simpson said. “To get to this level and be able to play the best teams in the country for the right to play for a national championship is pretty special. I’d say that in my 30-plus years of coaching, this team [is] right up there with some of the best teams I’ve ever coached.”
Kaylee Barrett of Lynnfield will be a freshman at Lynnfield High this fall. She has been playing for NEFC since she was in the fourth grade. She said playing for a national championship was “really cool.”
“Getting to play all these far-away states was incredible,” the center midfielder said. “I was so excited especially when Sophie got fouled and we were waiting to see if it was in the box. After she made it, we just had to ride out the last minute and focus on defense. And when the final whistle blew, we just all ran to our goalkeeper (Emma Hughes) and our parents just went crazy. It was so much fun and we all just went crazy.”
NEFC’s road to the championship included a 2-1 win over ALBION SC Idaho on Tuesday, June 27, a 2-0 win over South Lakes SC Oklahoma Cosmos on Wednesday, June 28 and a 2-1 win over Triangle United Gold (Chapel Hill, N.C.) on Friday, June 30.
The rest of the team consisted of Sadie Halpern, Sidney Reno, Liv Carlson and Sydney Ball, all of Marblehead; Jane Raymond, Swampscott; Taylor Osterlind, North Reading; Adi Ferry and Emma Damour, North Andover; Riley Dyer and Emma Hughes, Hamilton-Wenham; Antonella Najim, Danvers; Sophia Guimares and Guarracino, New Hampshire; Abby Shimelman, Framingham and Abby St. Clair and Grace Marquis, Maine.
With a national championship in their back pockets, Barrett, Skabeilis and, no doubt, most of their teammates are focused on getting ready for the fall soccer season at their respective high schools.
“It’s been really exciting going to captains’ practices and I think our team has a very good chance of going far because my grade has a lot of really strong players,” Barrett said. “We all played on the JV team last year as 8th graders, so we all know what to expect.”
Skabeikis has been playing varsity soccer for the Spartans since the 7th grade. She, too, is primed for a successful season.
“We’re a really young team with mostly sophomores and freshmen, but we have some really good players who I think are going to do well this year,” she said. “Right now, it’s all about getting ready for the fall season, now that our club season is over. When the whistle finally blew in the championship game, we were all so excited. We put in so much hard work to get here and all of the teams were very, very good, but as a team, we felt that we really deserved it. It was such a great way to end the season being able to win a national championship.”
