By Terry Boehmker
NKyTribune sports reporter
It was a moment Dixie Heights girls’ soccer coach Chris Sturm will always remember.
As the final seconds ticked off the clock in Saturday’s match at Notre Dame, the coach saw his players hugging each other with beaming smiles and tears of joy on their faces. They had become the first Dixie Heights soccer team to post a win against their local rival and perennial state power in more than 20 years. The final score was 1-0.
The coach’s daughter, Ciara, one of seven seniors on the Colonels’ roster, sent a text message from the field to her older sister and former teammate, Payton, about the win. The coach said tweets, snaps and text messages from Dixie soccer alumni everywhere began flooding in after that.
“The win validates the effort so many Dixie girls have invested,” coach Sturm said. “It strengthens the pride they have in each other and their school. Specifically, for these girls, it is one more memory in a special high school experience.”
After starting the season with an 0-3-2 record, the Dixie Heights team has gone 12-1-1 in its last 14 games and climbed to No. 19 in the latest state high school coaches rankings. With the post-season playoffs getting underway next week, the Colonels have established themselves as serious contenders for the 34th District and 9th Region titles.
Three of the team’s senior leaders missed much of preseason training last summer while attending a multi-week Governor’s Scholar program so it took the team some time to jell.
“We believed once the pieces came together we might have something special with these young ladies,” the coach said.
The Colonels’ successful run has been defensive oriented. They’ve given up only six goals in the last 14 games and posted nine shutouts. The coach said the defensive players “move and work together as one unit with no one member more important than another.”
On the offensive end, the team’s leading scorers are senior Lauren Hudson with 16 goals and freshman Carson Smith with 13. Seven players have three assists or more this season. Senior forward Sydney Mills heads that list with six.
In the 1-0 win over Notre Dame, Smith scored the lone goal off an assist by Hudson. Junior goalkeeper Lily Paganetto got the shutout and the coach said every time she made a save at the net the team’s confidence grew.
Sturm said the soccer team’s last win over Notre Dame came in the mid 1990s, but he wasn’t sure what year. According to scores posted on the khsaa.org website, Notre Dame had an 18-0 record against Dixie Heights over the last 17 years. Nine of those wins were shutouts, including two by 7-0 scores and three by 5-0 scores. The closest game during that span was Notre Dame’s 2-1 win in the 2012 playoffs.
With that long losing streak behind them, the Colonels can go into this year’s playoffs with a new sense of confidence.
“Our goal as coaches has been to help develop a program with a unique culture,” Sturm said. “To win consistently, everyone must move in the same team-oriented, coachable, thoughtful direction, with as little drama as possible. I can’t think of a better core group of seniors around which to build this new Dixie tradition.”