DE SOTO — The Bishop Miege girls soccer players were well aware of all the comments lobbed their way heading into the team’s seven straight appearance in the state championship match.

The rest of Class 4-1A seemed to let out a collective, “Here we go again.”

The Stags were also well aware that the comments, which often skew much more antagonistic than that on social media, were likely to continue after the final whistle blew at the end of this one.

They knew there would be a bunch of voices out there trying to undersell their effort and undervalue their accomplishments, largely by pointing to things out of their control or to the accomplishments of Miege’s past teams.

But when Miege head coach Nate Huppe broke the team huddle prior to kickoff, he delivered a familiar refrain to get his team to stop thinking about the past and start focusing on the future, or at least the next hour and a half.

“Now go get your own star,” Huppe shouts to his players, energizing them right in time to take the field and earn themselves their own star above the Bishop Miege crest, which signifies a state championship.

His players followed that order, delivering a fierce effort over the next 80 minutes and refusing to be the ones who let the title streak end.

Miege defeated Wichita Trinity 4-0 in the Class 4-1A state championship game on May 27 at De Soto High School. The team won its seventh consecutive state title, giving the Stags the record for most consecutive in Kansas history for girls soccer.
 

Miege senior Rose Lenihan said there’s another Huppe quote (via Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self) that also motivated the team in this one.

“Coach Huppe always says, ‘Don’t be the team to lose the streak or else you’ll feel really bad,’” Lenihan said.

To avoid that, Miege maintained relentless pressure in the championship final against Trinity, especially in the first half. Trinity freshman goalie Solame Pham and her backline found a way to keep the Stags off the scoreboard for the first half hour of match time, despite a double-digit number of shots on goal.

But in the final minutes before halftime, Miege’s determination finally paid off. The Stags actually earned its go-ahead goal off a failed attack by Wichita Trinity during one of its few trips into enemy territory in the game.

With around eight minutes left in the first half, Trinity sophomore midfielder Jojo Henderson stole the ball and made a break toward Miege’s goal. Stags sophomore midfielder Kristina Erskine stayed in her hip pocket the entire way, eventually taking the ball back and kicking it ahead to sophomore midfielder Rose Lopez.

Lopez started working around the ball toward the right side of the field, eventually finding its way to junior forward Dory Latenser. Latenser darted past two defenders and into Trinity’s penalty area. She crossed the ball back to Lopez, who perfectly trailed the action. Lopez took a shot at the goal, which ended up deflected by Trinity senior defender Rachel Glennen, who fell right into the path of the shot when she reversed directions as a response to Latenser’s pass.

Lenihan chased down the deflected ball just in time to re-route it inside the goal post and past the recovering goalie.
 

A few minutes later, sophomore defender Rowan Epps would find Latenser with a pass to just across midfield. Latenser immediately turned up the left side of the field and raced to the edge of the goal box before firing the ball into the back right corner of the goal.

Lenihan said it’s that 2-0 mark when the team really gets comfortable.

“The pressure kind of goes away after the first two goals,” Lenihan said. “Then you just feel better. We just have to keep the momentum and not give up.”

On the other side of the break, Latenser initiated another scoring attack when she made a cross from just outside the front left side of Trinity's penalty box back to the edge of the penalty arc. 

Sophomore forward Naomi Harris received the ball with a Trinity defender on each side of her. She still found a way to turn up field and fire a shot off around the right side of the defender between her and the net. Harris’ shot squeezed the ball right between another defender and the goalie diving toward the left goal post. The ball found the back of the net for the Stags to go up 3-0 just seven minutes into the second half.

Huppe was not surprised by the play, calling Harris is a “special player.”

“She’s quick, she’s fast and when she’s got her mind right, she’s almost unplayable (for a defender),” Huppe said. “She came up with some big goals in both of the state games and she helped us win.”

Harris would also get Miege right back on the attack a few minutes after her goal. She used the speed Huppe mentioned to take Trinity senior Karissa Schwing by surprise and steal the ball in the Knights’ penalty area. The Knights ended up forcing a Miege corner kick, only for sophomore midfielder Caroline Bock to nearly deliver the ball right on target for an attempted header by Epps on the front edge of the goal line. 
 

Instead, the ball sailed past Epps to Latenser, who kicked the ball into the net around the 53-minute mark for her second goal of the match.

Huppe said Latenser usually plays right wing back or center back during the club season, but the Stags ask her to play at up front to give them more scoring.

“She’s the best player in 4-1A, we think,” Huppe said.

Miege continued to control the action for the next 20 minutes before putting in the reserves to close out the game. Even with that line-up, the Stags were able to keep the 4-0 lead intact through the final whistle.

Lenihan said that as a senior, this state title felt different than her previous two.

“I don’t know, the past years have just felt like they passed by,” Lenihan said. “But this year it’s like your own, like we’re the seniors.”

Lenihan said she enjoyed how she and fellow senior captain Lexi Kurt and Jojo Valdivia were able to be role models for the underclassmen.

“To keep them up and bring them up, then have them help us bring home a state title, it was fun,” Lenihan said.

To reach the finals, Miege won its two regional games by a combined 16-0 margin against Ottawa and Louisburg. The Stags followed up with a 6-1 win over Cair Paravel in the state quarterfinals. Miege beat Topeka Hayden 4-1 in the state semifinals.

For Valdivia, she had one of her top moments during the team’s 10-0 victory over Ottawa in the regional opener.
 

“I got a header off a corner kick,” Valdivia said, with Kurt quickly interrupting her to explain that Valdivia is almost never successful on headers. “But it was exciting and it was a good goal, so everyone got hyped up for that.”

Trinity Academy reached the finals with a 2-1 victory in PKs against Baldwin in the state semifinals. The Knights were flawless during penalty kicks, going 3-0 to clinch their spot in the state final.

The Knights, who won the first and only state title in 2014, finished as the state runner-up for the third time in just over a decade (2012, 2016).

Even with a team of Trinity’s caliber, Bishop Miege was always going to be the favorite in Class 4-1A. But the team’s regular season performance left them wanting. The Stags entered the postseason with a 9-7 record, which included going winless against Eastern Kansas League foes.

“We lost all seven games and we got shut out six times,” Huppe said. “But when you lose you got to learn from it, and that’s what we did. From the first week to the end, all through the regular season, we played some of the best teams that we could possibly play.

“We just challenged our kids and that’s what gets us ready.”

Lenihan said pretty much the same.

“We have a really tough regular season and I think losing those games to bigger class schools, EKL schools, really prepares us to play teams like these, just go really quick and move the ball around 4A teams.”

Kurt added that the team also has the added preparation of experiencing state games in years past.

“We’ve worked hard for this all these years and we’ve done it every year,” Kurt said. “We’ve gotten used to the pressure, especially from tough games in the past in the state championship. So I think we were ready for it.”