Girls sports teams are racking up banners one after the other this fall sports season. On November 9, Tiverton Girls Soccer (#1) devoured Davies Career & Technical School (#3) in a breath-holding, nail-biting championship game.
In their previous game during the regular season, the Lady Tigers clinched the win against Davies with an easy 8-0 home win on September 13 and an 8-1 away win on September 26. Though, their championship game was a whole other story.
The girls have been pushing themselves this season in order to form a tight-knit championship team, from summer captain’s practices to the late-night Olive Garden pasta dinners. Cause, nonetheless, to create a state title-bearing team needs skill and teamwork.
Sofia Borges, a senior captain, scored a goal two minutes into the first half and deems that as her highlight of the game. Borges, among other seniors, nearly missed making it to the soccer championships by a few years. The last time Tiverton Girls Soccer had won a state championship was in 2018. Now, senior year was the last opportunity for Sofia to clinch a title.
Going into the game, the team’s overall mindset was, “even though we beat them, we knew they were gonna come out playing their best, so we just had to go out and play better and smarter” provided Sofia.
To play smarter and get better during the season, they went into every practice knowing what they needed to change or work on for the game, for instance, they would “change up positions or certain things that we do in the game” according to Sofia.
What made this game such a nail-bitter was the tie going into the second half of the game. Sofia and the team were on edge, as was Davies (we presume), due the unpredictability in the next half. If one of the teams scored, that may be the last goal for the game, determining the winner when the buzzer went off.
When Sofia was interviewed on the mixed emotions during that time she said, “When we went into the second half, 1-1, and it kinda made the team feel down on ourselves, and then coach (Mr. Gauch) told the team ‘we’re not losing the game. We need to keep our heads up and keep playing the right game’ and it puts a good sense of fear into us because if they scored a goal before we did, they would play a lot more defensive than offensive which would’ve made it harder for us to score”.
With the game-winning goal being from sophomore Tori Murray, the Tigers won (2-1) victoriously and ended their night with a lively police escort back to the high school.
Go Tigers!
