Chaparral girls slip by GV to claim soccer title

Victoria Sun

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 | 10:14 a.m.

The Chaparral girls soccer team got a little extra motivation to win the 4A Southern State Championship from an unlikely source -- the Chaparral boys team.

The boys won their state title last November by defeating Bishop Gorman, and they were all too happy to challenge the girls squad, using their championship rings.

Now, the Chaparral girls will have rings of their own to show off.

In a rematch of the the Sunrise Region title game, Chaparral beat Green Valley 1-0 Thursday night at the Bettye Wilson Soccer Complex.

"We didn't want to let them score in the first 10 minutes," Chaparral coach Dan Schell said. "Once we got to the half and we were tied, I think we showed them that we weren't going away.

"It wasn't like the last two times we played when our mistakes cost us."

Chaparral finished the season 14-5-3 while Green Valley finished 16-4-1.

Chaparral leading scorer Cortney Sobrero scored the winning goal from about 30 yards out on an assist from Jessica Torres about a minute into the second half.

Sobrero and her teammates were cheered on by a few hundred fans, including the boys soccer team, also coached by Schell.

It was Sobrero's 44th goal of the year.

"Winning state, I can't ask for anything more," Sobrero said. "That was motivation because they bragged all season about their championship so we wanted to show them we could do it too."

Chaparral lost to Green Valley 2-1 in the Sunrise championships and it looked as though it would fall again, as the Gators had nine shots on goal to Chaparral's six in the first half.

Green Valley finished with 16 shots on goal to Chaparral's nine, but the one score by Sobrero made the difference.

Chaparral goalkeeper Ashley Bennett recorded 11 saves in the victory.

"Chaparral is a quality program," Green Valley coach Joseph Jablonski said. "We played them hard for 84 minutes.

"My hat's off to them. I can't be any prouder of my girls. I told them, if you have a good shot, you take it, and that's what they did."

The one time Sobrero got free proved costly for the Gators.

"We tried to mark her as hard as possible," Jablonski said. "We knew if she had an open shot she'd take it. We left her open once and we paid for that mistake."