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St. Thomas Aquinas girl soccer players pose with four fingers held up to celebrate the team's four-peat as the Class 5A state champions.

SPRING HILL — For the fourth straight year, the Saints of St. Thomas Aquinas marched into the girls soccer state championship.

And for the fourth straight year, the Saints marched out as the champs.

St. Thomas Aquinas opened the Class 5A state championship match with two goals in the first 10 minutes, setting the tone for 5-0 over Blue Valley Southwest May 25 at Spring Hill High School. The Saints clinched the four-peat, earning the program its 20th state title all time.

Aquinas head coach Dan Brown described the team’s performance this season as a special effort, particularly on defense. The Saints allowed zero goals during the postseason on the way to setting the program’s single-season record.

“They just continued to get better practice by practice, game by game, and play by play,” Brown said. “That’s a great Southwest offense and a great Southwest team, and we knew we were going to be in for a battle coming into today. I’m glad we stepped up to that plate.”

One key to limiting the attack of Blue Valley Southwest, which scored seven goals in its semifinal victory over Maize South, was controlling the game with the Saints’ own offense. 

“A focus we talked about in the locker room (before the match) was getting on the board early and getting the lead, making it tougher for them and making it more of a struggle for them than it was for us,” Brown said. “We answered that call, got the early goals.”
 

St. Thomas Aquinas players celebrate after a goal during the Class 5A state championship match.

After Aquinas won the coin toss, Brown said he left it up to the team captains to decide if they wanted to play with or against the wind to start the first half.

“They wanted the wind and they delivered those three goals in the first half when they set the tone for the game,” Brown said.

The Saints started with a goal on a corner kick less than six minutes into the contest. Junior midfielder Anisten Cabantac delivered the ball right to the wall of players right in front of the goal.

Senior forward Maggie O’Keefe leaped into the air to connect with the ball and send it into the back of the net. O’Keefe did not remember how the team reached that corner kick. Hopefully her blurry memory has nothing to do with how that goal was made.

“I was on the goalkeeper and (the ball) just hit the side of my face and went in the goal,” O’Keefe said. “So it worked out.”

Junior forward Brooklyn Marn followed up just a few minute later. Marn tried to weave through the members of the Timberwolves backline, before one of them abruptly cut off her path for a foul about 35 yards out from the goal. She hit the free kick from distance, arcing it over a sea of players before clearing the Blue Valley Southwest goalie to reach the net.

Marn said taking advantage of those types of dead ball situations is a big strength for this team.
 

St. Thomas Aquinas junior forward Lauren Marn boxes out a Blue Valley Southwest senior defender Ashley Chaput during the Class 5A state championship match.

“We’ve scored on a lot of those and their goalie looked like she was coming out, so I just hit it right over her head,” Marn said.

Marn liked the play so much, she manufactured almost the same situation for a teammate later in the half. With a little over five minutes left before halftime, Marn tried to split two defenders again, but this time the Timberwolves were able to cleanly knock the ball away and out of bounds.

On the throw-in, Marn quickly got the ball to an open Maura Maher at about 40 yards out. With the closest defender hesitant to leave Marn open along the sideline, Maher dribbled a little closer to the goal before launching her own long range shot. The sophomore defender placed the ball perfectly underneath the crossbar and above the outstretched arms of the goalie, giving the Saints a 3-0 lead heading into the locker room.

Payne said those early goals really helped take the pressure off the defense, led by a backline that includes senior Jane Hansen.

“Jane (Hansen) and I were talking last night, we were really nervous for this team,” Payne said. “It just eases the pressure and lets us kind of play our game a little bit more and play through the midfield.”

But even with a 3-0 lead at the break, Payne knew she and her teammates needed to be ready as Blue Valley Southwest would not just give up.

“We knew it was gonna be a battle in the second half and obviously we were getting tired after our first half performance,” Payne said. “It's just knowing that everyone else is working for me, it helps me work for them.”
 

St. Thomas Aquinas senior goalkeeper Maggie Payne blocks a shot to force it over the goal during the Class 5A state championship match.

St. Thomas Aquinas senior defender Jane Hansen looks to pass the ball during the Class 5A state championship match.

Hansen, who has earned all-state honors every season of her high school career, said the key throughout the game was committing to the defensive gameplan.

“We talked before the game about emergency defending and that kind of just entails throwing yourself at the ball basically, so that they don't get a shot off,” Hansen said. “I thought we did that pretty well today.”

The Timberwolves came out of the break sending everything at the Saints offensively, but the Saints defense held strong. Their success opened the door for a handful of scoring opportunities going the other way.

During one of the Blue Valley Southwest’s longer trips into Saints’ territory, the Timberwolves got a throw-in attempt right as the Aquinas backline started to look a little tired.

But on the throw-in attempt, Marn started to move toward the corner before reacting late to the pass going to Timberwolves senior forward Hannah Palmer just outside of the penalty box. With Palmer focusing on boxing out a defender on her right, Marn swooped in to kick the ball away and toward midfield. 

O’Keefe sprinted over to take possession and go on the attack. Three defenders quickly surrounded her, only for O’Keefe to pass the ball ahead to Marn along the left side of the field. Marn dribbled directly at the closet defender, setting up a fake shot before dribbling around her and teeing off before another defender could reach her. 

Marn sent the ball floating into the deepest corner of the net, giving the Saints a 4-0 lead with 31:26 remaining.

“I got the ball at my feet and I just wanted to take her on,” Marn said. “I wanted it, so I took it and scored. If you’re going to give me space, I’m going to pull it so you gotta watch out for it.”
 

St. Thomas Aquinas sophomore defender Maura Maher connects with a header during the Class 5A state championship match

Marn’s move took her opponents by surprise, or at least surprised enough that they could not counter it, but her spectacular play did not surprise too many members of her team, including her coach.

“The minute I saw that she was taking her on 1v1, I kind of knew the result,” Brown said. “Just to score that goal in a state championship final, that was an amazing goal.”

As the game reached the final 20 minutes, Palmer tried to replicate the magic of Marn and Maher’s deep shots. But not only did Palmer’s shot go wide left, Payne quickly reeled it in get the Saints moving the other way.

Marn eventually found her way toward the left corner with possession. She earned the giant space that she received from her defender, only for Marn to expertly turn that into extra time for her teammates to get into possession.

When she finally went back on the move, Marn utilized that same shot fake from before. This time she got around the defender and set up a clear pass to O’Keefe, who quickly sent the ball down the edge of the penalty box toward Angelina DiCola. 

DiCola turned up field and outran her defender as she found clear space between her and the goalie. Instead of taking the shot, DiCola opted for a cross right in front of the goal.

O’Keefe read the play from DiCola and sprinted toward the front post. She got there with the ball too low for a header and too high for a kick with the goalie closing in. O’Keefe decided to not slow down at all as she flung her entire body toward the ball, which hit off her abdomen and into the back of the net alongside O’Keefe.

“She is one of the hardest workers I’ve ever coached,” Brown said of O’Keefe

“There’s never a play she’s giving up on. The minute that Angel (DiCola) got it down and crossed it to her, she just knew to run into the ball if you have to.”
 

St. Thomas Aquinas senior forward Maggie O'Keefe looks in the ball as she fights for position with Blue Valley Southwest freshman defender Katarina Stalin during the Class 5A state championship match.

O’Keefe said afterward that she was happy to score the “belly goal.”

“Every game we write a word on our stomach, that's our good luck charm and hit off front my stomach where we write the word was,” O’Keefe said.

O’Keefe disclosed that the word for this game was “Yacht,” but her nearby teammates emphatically stated that superstition around the ritual prohibits them from telling outsiders the meaning of the word or phrase.

With the team clinching a four-peat and already discussing what the chase for five straight could look like, even the Saints outgoing seniors did not want to chance upsetting the positive vibes.

Although this has been the same outcome in Class 5A over the last four years, the Saints did think that this championship felt a little different than the previous three.

“This year, I think it was really a defensive year, especially with those records,” Payne said. “We just took it to heart, keeping the ball out of the net this year and I think we did a really good job of that.”

St. Thomas Aquinas only allowed six goals this year, setting the new program record for a season. Previously, the Saints’ 2005 and 2016 squads held the record with only allowing eight goals. Payne broke the program’s single-single shutouts record with 18, overtaking Hannah Koesterer’s mark of 16 in 2005.

This was also the first championship without Class of 2023 graduate Sydney Watts leading the way. 

Watts owns two of the top of the top five highest points scoring seasons for a player in the program’s history. She finished with the third most career points by a Saints player, even though she missed her freshman campaign as the season was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She also shared the lead scoring duties in 2021 with O’Keefe’s older sister Grace, who scored 60 points that season to put her at eighth on the program’s career list

St. Thomas Aquinas players start a dogpile to celebrate winning the Class 5A state championship match.

“I heard a lot of chatter and there were a lot of people who thought, ‘Oh, you guys lost the best player in the country last year,’” Brown said. “Sydney Watts is an irreplaceable type of player. She’s an amazing once in a lifetime type of talent.”

It helped that the team still had more than enough capable scorers at the front.

“Sydney Watts is so good, but we also have a lot of really good forwards to pick it back up,” Hansen said, pointing to the performances of O’Keefe and Marn as proof.

Brown added: “I think everybody just assumed we were going to take a big step back. I think our girls answered that challenge. To have multiple kids that they can’t just focus on one player with our team because we have a lot of offense.”

Payne said another key was making sure the team’s performances on either half of the field helped impact the play on the opposite half, especially against teams with as much talent as the Timberwolves.

“We depend on our offense a lot to score goals,” Payne said. “I think we just had the knowledge of what Southwest was and we knew how to defend them. We worked our butts off so that our forwards could get the opportunities that they could.”

Now the Saints will need to replace a lot of talent at the back as Payne, Hansen, Andie Rylance and Sidney Zinkus are seniors. The team also graduated O’Keefe and midfielder Cara Holton, although, but Brown expects the team to return with a lot of offense once again.

“It’s going to be an exciting team to see them grow and build over the next few years as well,” Brown said.

Brown said that team’s already discussed how much they have returning and its plans to reload on its quest for a fifth straight state title.

“Those girls already have that mindset,” Brown said. “I think the juniors are probably already trying to come up with what our motto will be for the next year. I’m sure they’ll come up with something creative to have for the fifth, and that’s going to be something that all of these girls that are coming up that establish this and see this are going to know that we don’t want to be the ones that let it end.”
 

Bishop Carroll celebrates with the team's Class 5A state third-place trophy