St. Matthew’s Soccer Soaks It All In

The harder the rain fell, the more determined St. Matthew’s seemed to become in last Thursday’s Pacific Basin League girls soccer final.

Despite winning only once during the regular season, the Falcons hit their stride in the playoffs and won the championship in dramatic fashion, avenging an earlier defeat to Windward with a 2-1 triumph at Norton Field in Santa Monica.

With six and a half minutes left in the first half, Bridget Stokdyk broke free in the penalty area and slid the ball into the net to give the Falcons a 1-0 lead.

“I just dribbled the ball up, saw the keeper coming out, went around her and shot it left-footed,” said Stokdyk, who lives in the Riviera and plays club for the Westside Breakers’ U13 squad.

Midway through the second half, fellow eighth-grader Ashley Sammann scored on an almost identical play, left-footing a shot into the net on a breakaway to make it 2-0, but the Wildcats answered less than one minute later to pull back within a goal.

“I was sick for the first game against them so I wanted to make up for it,” said Samman, who lives in the Huntington and plays on Pacific Coast Soccer Club’s U14 team. “I ran onto a through ball over the defenders. It’s funny we both scored left-footed.”

Goalie Grace Gruber dove to deflect a point-blank shot midway through the first half and thwarted a corner kick opportunity in the final minutes.

“I wanted to stay agile and pump balls deep on my kicks,” said Gruber, who lives in Brentwood. “The toughest save was on one of their free kicks. When they scored I kept thinking we still have a one-goal lead.”

Windward, the No. 1 seed in the East Division, had won the previous encounter 5-3 when the Falcons got two goals from Chelsey Worrell and another from Stokdyk despite missing Sammann and all of their seventh-graders, who were on a retreat.

The Falcons celebrated Thursday’s win by dousing coach Jose Bravo with water bottles.    “It was clear in the first game who was their best player and our strategy was to double-team her and keep her going to the left, her weaker side,” said Bravo, who has led St. Matthew’s to five league titles in eight seasons.

Seeded third in the West Division, St. Matthew’s beat Westside Neighborhood 6-0 in the quarterfinals and Crossroads 1-0 on Emma Cordova’s goal in the semifinals.

Contributing to the title run were eighth-graders Maggie Kahn, Mikaela Kupfer, Abby Mapes, Isabel Wiatt, Haley Worrell, Reina Nadeau, Jamie Christian and Greta Gooding and seventh-graders Flora Troy, Camila Macias, Alyssa Mariscal, Bronwen Higley, Caroline Douglas, Chloe Donovan and Grace Cortese.

In the boys final, Crossroads beat St. Paul 4-2 aided by local eighth-graders Josh Dembo and Grant Stanley.