Work Hard, GET GOOD
U9s Make it Three Titles In a Row
Apopka, Florida (April 15, 2006) - The Sunrise Sting u9 girls won the Apopka 3v3 Challenge in an action-packed day of soccer. This was the third championship for the team in a span of 14 days, having previously won the FAU 5v5 Tournament on April 9 and the Nova Spring Shootout on April 2.
This time, Sunrise ventured into new territory and an entirely new set of competition by playing in this 3v3 tournament just north of Orlando. Apopka is a beautiful town set amongst rolling hills and trees. The Fields of Fame, site of the tournament, is the largest park we have ever played at and is literally acres and acres of soccer fields.
The 9-year-old division had a total of seven entries. In addition to our team, the Tampa Knights, Creeks Athletic Association (Jacksonville), Maitland White, Maitland Blue, the CFU Rockets and the CFU Wildcats were in this age group. Because there was an odd number of teams, seven, the teams were split into one bracket of four and one bracket of three. We were entered in the bracket of three, along with the Wildcats and Maitland Blue.
The "three" bracket was set up so that each team, played the other two
teams, two times in preliminary play. In the "four" bracket, each team
played in a typical round robin format. This would mean the "three" bracket
teams would play four games in preliminary play, while the "four" bracket
teams would only play three games. In our first game, we played Maitland Blue, winning 5-1. Next up was going to be the CFU Wildcats, and in a thrilling contest, the match ended in a 2-2 tie. The third game was against Maitland Blue again. The girls played their best game to that point in the day, and the team won by a 5-0 score. The fourth game was against the Wildcats. To this point, both the Wildcats and us had a record 2-0-1. This was going to be an important game because a Wildcat win or even a tie would give them the number 1 seed for the semi-finals. Even though both the Wildcats and our team had identical records, under the tiebreaker system, the Wildcats had the edge. Both teams were tied with goal differential (9), but CFU had scored more goals to this point (14) than us (12), thus giving them the tiebreaker edge. That meant Sunrise had to win this game to get the number 1 seed for the playoffs. The Sunrise girls ended up with a 2-1 victory in this game and the number 1 seed.
As it turned out, Sunrise would not be done with CFU, because the number two seed on the other side was another CFU team, the Rockets. This game was all Sunrise and the girls ran off with an 8-1 win.
The final was against Maitland White. Sunrise scored fairly early in this game and cruised to a 3-0 victory and the championship.
In this 14-day time span, the u9s have won three championships and have compiled a record of 12-0-1. The girls have scored a total of 55 goals and allowed 10. The u9s are currently riding a 16 game unbeaten streak against same age competition and have lost only one time in the last 25 matches. However, much more important than wins or losses, all of the players have improved greatly and everyone had a significant contribution in these recent tournaments. The girls now have a lifetime record of 35-5-5.