How St. Joseph's girls soccer returned to first SCHSL state championship game since 2022
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Seniors on the St. Joseph’s girls soccer team have been in this position every year.
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They’d made it to the semifinals of the high school state tournament three times since St. Joseph's won the 2022 championship in SCHSL Class 2A/1A, but were knocked out each year by a region rival.
They changed the ending.
Senior forward Caroline Mruz scored two goals, the second in double overtime, and St. Joseph’s beat Southside Christian, 2-1, May 16 in the Class 3A Upper State championship.
“It’s huge,” Mruz said. “It means so much to be able to take our team to state. We’ve worked so hard for this, and we’ve just grown as a team.”
St. Joseph’s (13-4) will face either Oceanside or Waccamaw in the state championship game scheduled for 11 a.m. on May 22 at Memorial Stadium in Columbia.
St. Joseph’s finished runner-up in Region 2-3A to Christ Church, the team that ended the Knights' previous three seasons. But the Cavaliers were upset in this year’s quarterfinals by Southside Christian (12-10), the fourth-place team in the region at 5-5 with two of those losses to St. Joseph’s.
“We believed we could be right here in this spot,” said St. Joseph’s first-year coach Katie Martin, a former Eastside assistant. “We thought it would be against Christ Church. Honestly, we were hoping it would be against Christ Church. But Southside Christian played a great game and we really had to work hard to get past them.”
Mruz collected a loose ball off a corner kick in front of the net with less than two minutes remaining in the second overtime and kicked in the eventual game-winner.
“It bounced off somebody and it was sitting right there for me,” Mruz said. “I was able to spot it and finish it into the corner.”
Mruz is the top scorer for St. Joseph’s with 18 goals and six of those have come in the playoffs.
“She’s just a fantastic player,” Martin said. “She absolutely deserved this moment. Today, she represented her team as a captain and showed those kinds of qualities. Any coach could love to have her.”
With Mruz leading the way, St. Joseph’s entered the game having outscored opponents 27-1 in the past four games.
The Knights lost two of their first three games this season to 4A Hilton Head in overtime and to 5A Wade Hampton, also by one goal. The only losses since were 1-0 and 2-2 on penalty kicks against Christ Church.
“We’re excited,” Martin said. “We're going to go down to Columbia with a lot of confidence and see what happens.”
Todd Shanesy covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: St. Joseph's girls soccer advances to SCHSL 3A state championship game