ACS Girls Reach Finals at City Soccer Tournament

(Thanks to reporting from coach Vesselina Tepeshanova.)

At the end of October, the girls (Grades 8-10) of the ACS team took part in the City Soccer Tournament for Girls, organized by the Bulgarian Soccer Union.

In Group A, our girls started with a definitive victory of 5:0 against the Professional Gymnasium for Food Technologies. Our team's scorers were Viktoria Petrova with 3 goals and Katrin Nikolova with 2.

Our second game in A Group, against 144th Middle School, was more challenging, but our girls won again. The score was 2:0 with goals by team captain Evgenia Velkova and Viktoria Petrova. The 6 points won by the team qualified it for the semifinals.

At the semis, we faced the team of 2nd English Language High School. The game was exceedingly challenging and consequently reached the end time with no winner (0:0), which led to a penalty shoot-out. Each team had 3 penalty kicks. Our opponents missed two, the first one getting caught by our goal-keeper Bailey Smith. Our two-score was courtesy of Katrin Nikolova and Evgenia Velkova.

And so it came to be that at the final we faced the 119th Middle School's team. It was a fourth consecutive game with barely any breaks and exhaustion was a real factor. Both teams started the game a bit hesitantly, but the lust for victory overpowered exhaustion and in the final minutes the battle turned fierce: there were attacks on both goals that both goalies caught, and a couple pole hits for each team. Unfortunately, in the last seconds of the game, following a melee before our goal the ball hit our net.

So, after three wins and a narrow 0:1 loss the ACS team took the second place in the tournament.

The other players who contributed to the success with their excellent game were Iana Nikolova, Liliya Venkova, Aleksandra Yashmakova, and Karina Campbell.

Congratulations to the girls and their coach Vesselina Tepeshanova, and assistant coaches Teressa Kuhelj and Leslie Brannigan.