Sunrise Sting Soccer
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Sting Win Championship in a Thriller

Weston, Florida (May 15, 2005) - The U8 Sunrise Sting won the South Florida 3v3 Super Challenge over the South Broward Stingers 5-4 in a thriller of a game.

Sunrise had an easy ride getting to the championship game, but that would change for the final contest. Sunrise opened up with a 5-0 shutout of the Eagles, followed by a 8-1 win over the Lady Dragons, a 7-1 win over the Cooper City Cobras and a 5-1 win over the Stingers.

The Stingers then played off against the Eagles for the right to take on Sunrise in the championship. The Stingers knocked off the Eagles 5-2 to set up the rematch with Sunrise.

On the first play of the game, South Broward broke free and took a shot that bounced off the post. The Sunrise defender, in a rush to clear the ball from an oncoming attack, inadvertently knocked the ball into her own net to give South Broward a 1-0 lead. This would be the first time for the entire tournament that Sunrise was down. But the team rallied and completely controlled the flow of play during the next 17 minutes and did not allow a single shot. Sunrise scored a goal to tie during that time period, but had some bad luck as five shots either hit the post or missed by inches. At the 18-minute mark Sunrise made it 2-1 and opened up the second half with another goal to make it 3-1.

But the game was not over, at 19-minutes a Sunrise defensive mistake gift wrapped a goal for South Broward to make it 3-2 and they knocked in one more one-minute later to tie the game. Sunrise quickly came back and made it 4-3 on the subsequent kick-off. Then, with 25 seconds remaining, a South Broward player got open in the middle of the field for just a second and hit a shot for a goal to tie the game at 4-4 and put it into overtime.

About two minutes into the overtime a Sunrise attacker broke free and had a shot from about 14 yards out that missed the inside post by inches. The overtime ended tied.

That led to penalty kicks, done in sets of three. The kicks were done from the half line with no keeper on the small net. The first two players for each team converted their kicks. The third kickers for each team missed. For the next round, the first player on both teams made it, the second players missed, and then the third players converted. In the third round, the first players for both teams missed. The second Sunrise player made it, the second South Broward player missed to give Sunrise the championship.

On the game, Sunrise had 15 shots, South Broward had 7. For the tournament, Sunrise finished with 5 wins and 0 losses, they scored 30 goals and allowed 7.

The u8 team has now played in two tournaments, (FAU was the other). Across both tournaments, the team has combined for 8 wins and 1 loss and have outscored their opponents by a 42-10 margin. The team only has 5 players. Tryouts are on June 11, June 14 and June 18.

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