Youth Sports Report:

Soccer: HCU Girls earn victory, but are eliminated

Posted Jun 21, 2009 by Nick Murray

Updated Jun 21, 2009 at 08:33 PM

Hillsborough County United’s girls under-19 team did everything they could to move into the semifinals of the U.S. Youth Soccer Southern Regionals in Dallas on Sunday, but a 2-0 victory against the Dallas Texans left them a few goals short and they missed out on both the group title and wild card berth.

HCU finished the tournament 2-0-1, but only held a +4 goal differential. Fellow group member the D’Feeters (Texas), with whom HCU had tied 1-1 on Saturday, thumped West Side Alliance 7-0 in their final game to finish with a +10 differential, while Group A’s runner-up Tophat Soccer Club from Georgia earned a tie in its final game, and finished with a +6 differential to eliminate HCU.

HCU scored early through Emily Dowd and Kelly Grimsly, but then the goals dried up.

“We went up 2-0 20 minutes into the game, and we just could not finish the third goal,” Coach Jim Cote said. “The last 10 minutes we had two breakaways and a ball on the line, we just couldn’t put it away. As we missed that last one, Tophat scored a goal to tie the game, and we knew that was it.”

Cote said he and fellow coaches George Fotopoulos and Mike Rossi were proud of the effort their short-handed squad had put in. Without any substitutes, all 11 players played 270 minutes in temperatures that at times broke 100 farenheit.

“The performance was fantastic,” Cote said. “To battle the heat conditions, 95 to 103 degrees, that we played in, playing on 80x120 [yard] fields. We battled the elements, and the Texans threw everything at us, and we did what we had to do. We just couldn’t find the third goal.”