After a month of allowing her national championship sink in, Kayla King and Madilyn Vukcevich recall the U15 soccer title as a nerve-wracking experience.
The De Anza Force U15 girls team captured the Elite Clubs North American League championship on July 15 where the Force did not yield a goal against four opponents in the finals.
The Elite Clubs National League has two playoff paths. Teams will either play for the Champions League — which takes 32 teams — or they will enter the American League playoffs — which also take 32 teams.
The girls are both Morgan Hill natives who have been playing soccer for a number of years. King is a sophomore at Sobrato, while Vukcevich is a sophomore at St. Francis.
For King — who played right back and midfield — the experience was an opportunity to show off her skills on a national stage.
“It was a good experience all around being around college coaches and great teammates,” King said.
She said the thing that will stick with her the most is how the team continued to battle through the tournament and qualifiers and came out stronger for it.
“Our team had its ups and downs with each other, but as a team, we came together,” King said.
Vukcevich said the team had been good for a while, but couldn’t quite turn it into wins on a big stage.
But she said the win showed that the team had turned it around.
“We started to work together as a team. We knew we all wanted it,” Vukcevich said.
The De Anza Force is a club team based out of Cupertino that touts itself as an organization that develops soccer skills in players to get them noticed by colleges. It claims on its website that 93 percent of girls who have played moved on to college since 2008.
King, Vukcevich and their teammates couldn’t let up during the run, fighting to be one of 16 that qualified for the national finals.
After losing in the opening round to Carolina, De Anza swept the next two contests against Solar-Chelsea and Internationals SC, scoring the two teams 6-1.
“After we lost, we were pretty bummed, because we knew we ad to win all three,” Vukcevich said. “But we knew we had a chance, so we gave it our all.”
King said it was the first time her team advanced to the semi finals and didn’t want the experience to end.
“We just said to each other, you know guys, we came this far, why turn back now? We just had this intense urge to win the national title,” King said.
The Force entered the championships knowing that a single loss would knock them out of title contention.
In Hollywood fashion, the Force faced a team it never beat before in order to clinch the title.
The So Cal Blues had never lost against the Force and King said the team had an initial bout of worry when they learned who the finals would be against.
“When we found out we were going to play them, we all looked at each other and were like oh yeah. Then we were just like, let’s just go after that them,” King said.
Vukcevich said the team had to make sure it kept its composure because it knew So Cal was going to come at them very hard.
“I was pretty intimidated going into it,” Vukcevich said.
The Force opened with a great fury, scoring a goal in the first five minutes of the match.
“We scored in the first five minutes of game and we just went crazy, but it just the first five minutes, so we had to pull ourselves together,” King said.
So Cal Blues started pushing hard from that point, trying to pressure the Force into making a mistake that would allow them to tie the game.
With a one-goal cushion, the defense came together and vowed to let it hold up and give the offense a chance.
“We got together after the goal and we said ‘no one will get behind us and no one scores,’” King said. “Obviously, that worked.”
The team held off the onslaught of the Blues attacks and let the 1-0 lead hold up.
Vukcevich said she will recall most the character that the team displayed in order to win the title.
“It was more about heart with the whole experience,” Vukcevich said. “We all gave all we could.”
Both players said they want to continue with the Force through high school.
Vukcevich said she is still deciding whether she is going to play for the St. Francis team this winter. She said the team is very competitive and it helped teach her a lot last year, which is making her still consider playing this year.
