It’s really a shame how things ended for the Sapulpa girls soccer team, because one of the school’s best-ever seasons ended on a bit of a sour note. Still, a lot was accomplished during the year and even though the team’s two best players are graduating, there is still plenty of optimism for next season’s prospects.
The first thing that Chieftains coach Lori Arundell said about the season was that initially, she didn’t think the team would be as good as it was, but they ended up tying the school record with 12 wins. Coming off a 2022 season in which Sapulpa went 12-5 and reached the Class 5A state quarterfinals, Arundell expected a bit of a letdown. That’s not how it turned out.
Senior forward Ella Chaffin was the top offensive player, scoring 20 goals, while senior midfielder Paola Chavez contributed eight goals, Asia Dunn had six goals and six assists. Alex Terrones chipped in five goals and six assists and Bella Leep had five goals and four assists. The team was also dominant defensively, outscoring opponents 45-3 over the final 13 games of the season, while posting 10 shutouts, including a stretch of eight in a row from March 21 to April 7. The Chieftains also won their own tournament in late March.
“It went better than I thought it was going to go,” Arundell said. “At the beginning of the year, it was not that great. In the preseason, we play super-tough teams for a reason, because you need to see where you’re at, but it was just the way we were playing. I was thinking, ‘Oh, this is going to be a long year, there’s just no way.’ And then we started going, and chemistry is so big in soccer, you’ve got to play a while just to kind of get it.”
A 4-2 loss to Oologah on March 9 left the team 2-1 entering spring break, and Arundell made a few personnel shifts and that sparked a major turnaround and the eight-game winning streak.
“It made a world of difference, because when we came back, we just started playing really well,” Arundell said. “They were gelling, we were scoring all these goals.”
Perhaps the biggest change that helped transform the squad’s fortunes was moving Dunn from midfielder to defender. That allowed Chavez to remain in the middle all the time and Dunn’s presence in the backfield solidified the defense. Between her and senior goalkeeper Khali English, who moved into the net from D, the Chieftain defense clamped down and allowed just three goals over the season’s final 13 games – and all of those came in a 3-0 loss to Bishop Kelley on April 11.
“I had Asia in the middle and her and Paola switching, but I ended up playing Asia in the back pretty much the remainder of the year and that’s the reason why we had so many shutouts,” Arundell said. “She was technically our best player. She can left-foot it, right-foot, she’s technically the most sound player we have. And she has speed, obviously, so when I had her in the back, she made a world of difference. We would make mistakes and she would just be there to clean it up.
“And Khali ended up being our goalkeeper. She played a couple of games in the back last year when our starter (Megan Harris) was hurt. Well, she graduated and we really didn’t have a goalkeeper coming in. So I told Khali, ‘I’m pulling you from the field. I know you don’t want to, but you have to.’ She was like, ‘Okay.’ She did really well, especially that not even being her natural position.”
With a 12-2 record heading into the final regular season contest at McAlester, the Chieftains looked to be in great shape. The squad was in second place in District 5A-3 with a 5-1 mark, losing only to perennial powerhouse Bishop Kelley, and was hopeful of hosting a first-round playoff match.
They controlled much of the game, but they just couldn’t find the back of the net. After regulation ended with the teams tied 0-0, and then two more 10-minute overtime periods also finished without a goal, the teams went to a shootout, which McAlester ended up winning.
That dropped the Chieftains to third in the district, which meant having to go on the road for the first-round playoff matchup against a tougher opponent – in this case, 9-5 Collinsville.
“What I hated about the McAlester game was, and I knew it was going to come down to this, was the playoff seeding,” Arundell said. “We literally dominated about 90 percent of that game and we just couldn’t get a freaking ball in. We played so well and dominated but we didn’t win.”
And again, Sapulpa enjoyed the territorial advantage against Collinsville and played strong defense, they just couldn’t score again. So after another scoreless game and OT, it went to penalty kicks, and once again, the Chieftains found themselves on the wrong end of it.
“It was a closer game than McAlester, but we, physically and spatially dominated quite a bit of the game,” Arundell said. “There was a couple of offside calls that were missed, a PK that should have been called but wasn’t, it just sucks. They played super hard and super well, so I have no qualms about it. If you don’t score, it’s just one of those things.”
Now, a few weeks later, Arundell can appreciate what the team accomplished during a special season.
“All in all, we won our tournament, which we hadn’t in a few years, we played very well,” she said. “We tied the wins record, which, before spring break, I did not think was going to happen.”
