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Girls questions answered
MISAL champions times three
Friday, Oct. 30, 2009
Would Calverton be any good after graduating some key seniors? Were they capable of winning a third straight title without them?
The answers, which were resounding yeses, were completed with an exclamation point Tuesday night at Anne Arundel Community College when the Cougars polished off a perfect season with a 4-0 win over Rockbridge Academy in the Maryland Independent Schools Athletic League championship.
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photos by MICHAEL REID
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The top-seeded Cougars (19-0), who blanked the Scots 4-0 on Oct. 9, rode two goals from Cat Chase and never looked back.
"Oh my gosh, I'm so excited," said Calverton senior goalie Katie Tarry, who stopped four shots for her second individual shutout of the season. "Not only are we 19-0 but we took first place in league and we're the tournament champions."
"I'm very excited to be undefeated because it's a really hard thing to do no matter which league you're in," said Bunn, who was named All-MISAL player of the year. "It's a pretty amazing thing."
"There are a lot of other good players in the league and every team had a good, strong player," Bunn said of receiving the unexpected award. "It could have gone to anybody, really."
Calverton was 17-2 overall last year on its way to winning its second straight league tournament crown but lost several key players, including 55-goal scorer Kelcie Davis.
"We lost some key talent last year and [the returning players] heard from people and their classmates, ‘How are you going to do this?,'" Calverton head coach Carlton Leslie said. "And they really had an attitude in the beginning of the year that as great as Kelcie and Callie [Price] were, we could still do this. They had a little chip on their shoulder."
"I think it got the girls pumped up over the summer that people kept saying, ‘Oh no, how are they going to do without Kelcie and all the other players we lost?,'" Tarry said. "Yes, they were good, but it just gave us more reason to get pumped up. We just said, ‘We're still the Calverton Cougars and we're still amazing.'"
And during the 2009 season, they quite simply were. The Cougars posted 10 shutouts and did not allow more than two goals in any game. Offensively, Calverton scored seven or more goals 10 times.
"We have a really good work ethic and I think that helped a lot," Tarry said when asked if staying focused during frequent routs was a problem. "And if girls weren't staying focused, we had our captains and other girls, who are natural leaders, keeping everybody focused."
"Our team has really stuck together this season and we've been playing together for awhile now," said senior Jessica Selby of the team's 52-3 record the last three years. "And our out-of-league games really helped us improve."
"We had some new faces come in and step up and I think overall from top to bottom this was our toughest schedule," Leslie said. "We may not have had [soccer-rich] Severn School or St. Mary's Ryken [on our schedule], but all our non-conference games were against at least the top two or three in their [respective] leagues."
And entering Tuesday's matchup in the rain, Calverton needed just one more ‘W' to complete a perfect, untied season.
But second-seeded Rockbridge (12-3-1) was not going to go out quietly.
The Scots came out and pressed early but were unable to get a shot past Tarry and the defense.
"They did come out tough and we definitely struggled in the beginning," Bunn said. "I think we thought that because we had already beaten them in the beginning [of the season] that we had a walk-away. Once we realized [they were going to fight], we started to get fired up and realized we had to get it together and play hard and play our game, like we always do."
And that game they play includes scoring, such as the goal Chase pushed past Scots' goalkeeper Liesl McClintock in the 15th minute to open the scoring.
Bunn made it 2-0 in the 21st minute and Hope Perry (60th minute) and Chase (79th) again each converted in the second half to complete the scoring and nail down the perfect season.
"It's breathtaking," Selby said of the win and the season. "We've had two [titles] before this but this is even better because it's three in a row."
"This year I really didn't have to do a lot of motivational stuff because they really came out focused and pumped up," Leslie said. "They really had something to prove."
Mission accomplished.
