By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

*Photos: Michael A. Lough/The Central Georgia Sports Report*

How the day and evening went was unexpected, and yet almost perfect.

Kate Blankenship asked her team about the dream scenario in which they were to soon engage.

“It’s raining, and you’re playing your rival,” the veteran Stratford head girls soccer coach. “It’s perfect.”

And it pretty much was a perfectly imperfect night, extended by weather that left a drenched field and fog, with bodies and a ball slipping and sliding as a state championship trophy sat off to the side sweating through the humidity.

Two goals in the final 122 seconds led to overtime, Emma Lizotte put Stratford on top midway through overtime, then Bowen Matthews’ free kick from the left side with 6.5 seconds left had too much on it and sailed over the goal, and Stratford held off FPD 4-3 in overtime Tuesday night for the GIAA Class 4A state title.

The Eagles completed a 20-0 season, while the Vikings finished 15-3, with all three losses coming to Stratford, two needing more than 80 minutes and Tuesday night putting Stratford in some holes.

“The ability for them to be down twice and fight their way back, and then score the third, game-winner, with two minutes left and give up a goal and not fold, that shows their resilience,” Blankenship said. “They turned around, they went back to business in overtime, and they got it done.

“The resilience of this group is unbelievable.”

*Stratford’s Mary Marshall Swift (right) battles FPD’s Bowen Matthews*

Josh Trieste returned to coach FPD’s girls after resigning in May of 2024 as the head coach of the boys and girls program. His last game was a 3-2 loss to Brookstone in the semifinal that year. And he was back in another late-season playoff game.

Depth and experience favored Stratford in this third meeting, but not by much.

“We kind of did what we wanted to do,” he said. “We don't have a deep team, so we knew girls were going to have to try to log as many minutes as they could.

“If you told me before the game we were going to get two or three goals against Stratford in the final, I'd have signed up for that.”

Mother Nature turned Title Tuesday into a logistical mess, the day supposed to start at 2:30 p.m. with Central Fellowship and Westminster Christian in the Class AA finale. Lightning and rain blew that out of the water – so to speak – early on, with updates and wishful thinking and delays to follow.

FPD and Stratford had a 7:30 p.m. start time that moved and moved and moved, finally starting at 9:32 p.m. as the AAA finale between St. Andrews and Westminster-Augusta finished up on the young practice turf field – with stands – next to Stratford’s main field.

*FPD’s Katelynn Jackson scored the Vikings’ first goal, and Stratford’s Emma Lizotte put in the Eagles’ final goal*

The lightning moved on to terrorize somewhere else and leave the Eagles and Vikings alone. It was eventually replaced, though, by a thick haze that drastically cut down on visibility.

“Literally, probably this third of the field, I was like, ‘Who are they playing it to?’” Blankenship said. “And then like, I see the little silver shorts and I'm like, Oh my gosh. I didn't even know who it was over there.”

The air was pretty clear when Katelynn Jackson stunned the Eagles with a goal all of 36 seconds into the finale, taking Matthews’ throw-in and dribbling through traffic, her long roller having just enough pace to get past Maggie Jamison to the right side of the net.

Stratford possessed the ball well, but FPD turned up the defense to keep the high-scoring Eagles from getting many good looks or shots. Stratford’s missed tended to be high, and FPD’s scooting past the goal.

Then came the surprising equalizer, Hadley Stewart’s corner kick all but turning into a drone and improbably steering itself just inside the net.

That tied it with 2:23 left,

Matthews spent the first half struggling to get much contact with the ball, thanks to the constant contact of sophomore Mary Marshall Swift.

“Mary Marshall is a competitor through and through,” Blankenship said. “I mean, she's a track state champion. She's a competitor. She looks at me and says, ‘I'll do whatever you want me to do, Coach.’

"Really proud of her stepping up and having to defend an unbelievably gifted player.

But one of the leading goal-scorers in Bibb County public and private school history did get a little loose and put FPD back on top less than three minutes into the second half, the Vikings starting to possess the ball more.

Campbell McIntyre tied it up again with a tough goal amid traffic in front of the goal at 14:26.

The Eagles resumed more ball control and the Vikings resumed defending, as playerS from both sides bodied up like a hockey game, a moderately fitting analogy on a night when players battled a slick turf.

The edge, though, belonged to Stratford on a night when quality footwork was never more important.

“We just talked about breaking our feet down earlier, because you're not going to be able to just stab and then turn and catch back up,” Blankenship said. “We had to break our feet down and make sure we were able to change directions when that time came.

“I think after about the first 20 minutes, we settled into that and kind of figured out how that was going to play.”

A dozen minutes later, the Eagles took their first lead of the night, courtesy of Maddie Biesterfeld, one of Stratford’s top offensive threats. Back to where they expected to be – leading – all the Eagles needed to do was hold off the Vikings for two minutes and two seconds.

Re-enter Matthews, frustrated much of the night in general and with officiating in a physical matchup with both sides bodychecking. Her header floated into the back of the net with 53.4 seconds left in regulation, and the enthralling night of soccer would continue.

Two minutes into overtime, the ever active Lizotte just missed off the crossbar. She felt confident she’d get another chance.

“I was just trying to get shots in,” she said. “After I hit the crossbar, the next one, I felt that coming.”

That chance came at the 5:30 mark when her long liner from the right side hooked in safely for the lead again.

“I was just in the moment,” Lizotte said. “I’d already got a couple shots, so I was just waiting for that next goal, and I felt it coming. Just got a good foot on it.”

She apologized for not being as eloquent as she’d like, but her footwork again spoke volumes, and at the most important time.

Time, incidentally, that also began to slip away for FPD as Stratford worked to expedite that slipping. Stratford watched the clock drop to under a minute and then a half-minute and prepared to celebrate.

Then, a whistle with 6.5 seconds left, and there sat the ball on the left wing, 30 or so yards from the net, with Matthews – in her final high school sporting event, with plans to graduate in December and enroll early at Auburn for soccer - lining it up.

Alas, on a championship night overflowing with adrenaline, Matthews’ boot was too strong and too high, and the Eagles finally realized that it was over.

Trieste had the demeanor of a coach who liked everything he saw from his team in the preceding two hours except the result.

“After the last game we had here and just the way we've been playing, the way they've been playing, I knew they were going to be good but I knew that we were playing really well and that it was going to be a battle,” he said. “We had a lot of players step up. We kind of counted on them to fill a role and they did.

“We just got a lot of girls that are willing to sacrifice some stats just to win.”

Blankenship, a Stratford alum, beamed.

“In order to reach our potential, you had to have the intangibles and that kind of extra grit, the character, the maturity to look at a down goal situation and know that we still are in it,” she said. “And to to push through and make that fall your way, it's just a testament to their heart, and leaving blood, sweat, and tears on the field.”