PREP UPDATE: MA, Trinity take state soccer titles; Hooper Academy celebrates signings

Trinity and Montgomery Academy won state soccer titles while two athletes - Dalton Hooper and Rusty Mosley - signed scholarships recently. (Contributed)

COMBINED REPORTS

Trinity scored a pair of goals in the first half and relied on their defense throughout the game to snap Donoho’s 23-game unbeaten streak with a 3-1 victory in the 1A-3A girls’ soccer finals at John Hunt Park on Friday night.

For Trinity, it was the school’s second state title in the last three state tournaments, beating Guntersville for the 4A-5A title in 2018 before losing to Montgomery Academy in the second round of the 2019 tournament. The Wildcats dropped to 1A-3A in 2020 and were poised for a return before the coronavirus pandemic struck and the remainder of the season was canceled in March.

This season, Analyn Coker’s senior-laden team presented the coach with her 200th coaching victory in the season opener against Opelika and then led the team into the state playoffs for the 14th time in Coker’s 16 seasons (with one of the misses coming in last year’s COVID-shortened season). 

All four of Trinity’s losses this season were to schools from higher classifications, including 6A Mountain Brook, 6A state champion St. Paul’s Episcopal, 4A-5A state champion Montgomery Academy and 7A semifinalist Smiths Station.

Since losing to Smiths Station on March 18, the Wildcats (19-4-2) closed out the season with 13 consecutive wins, defeating those teams by a combined score of 64-6.

In Friday’s win, Mary Alice Sasser opened the scoring with a goal with 28:02 remaining in the first half. The 1-0 lead held up through the remainder of the half until Emilyn Etheredge scored a goal with 1:38 remaining on an assist from Bentley Moore for a 2-0 halftime lead.

MA girls soccer add another title

HUNTSVILLE – Leighton Robertson assisted on the Eagles’ first goal, then added two of her own as Montgomery Academy reclaimed the title with a 6-1 victory over St. John Paul in the 4A-5A state soccer championship at John Hunt Park.

The championship was the ninth for Montgomery Academy, tied for the most in the history of the Alabama High School Athletic Association’s girls soccer program. 

“I’m unbelievably proud of the girls,” said Montgomery Academy coach Joe White, making his first trip to the state tournament. “To go a season without losing a game, including beating two of the four 7A final four teams, and getting a tie against another is no easy feat. They played every game like a state championship and I’ve not coached a group as competitive as these girls.”

Montgomery Academy played three of the four teams in the Class 7A state tournament, beating Smiths Station and Enterprise and tying Oak Mountain 1-1 on March 30. Two days later, the Eagles defeated St. James 2-1 and followed that with 51 unanswered goals before St. John Paul’s Jaclyn Laue finally scored early in the second half of the state finals. 

“A special thank you to Alex Budny and Leighton Robertson, our two seniors who have left the program in a better place,” White continued. “That being said, with four state championships in a row, every single returning player has never lost a playoff game. That shows the level of MA girls soccer.”

Since losing on penalty kicks to Holy Spirit in the 2016 semifinals, Montgomery Academy girls soccer has posted 17 consecutive wins, outscoring its playoff opponents 102-10 in winning a pair of 1A-3A state titles (2017 and 2018) and a pair of 4A-5A titles (2019 and 2021).

The 17 consecutive postseason wins ranks second all-time in AHSAA girls’ soccer. Briarwood won 22 straight in 1997-98-99-00-02-03. 

Friday’s championship game got off to a flying start for the second straight game when Hayes Jenkins put the ball in the back of the net from a Robertson pass. Robertson, the tournament’s most valuable player, added a goal of her own off a header from a Alex Budny corner just before half time. 

The second half started shaky with the Falcons’ Lane scoring off a corner after two minutes, but MA regained control of the game with four goals in the last 20 minutes.

Jenkins answered Lane’s goal less than five minutes later for a 3-1 lead. Virginia Meacham added a goal for the Eagles with 25:48 to play, Robertson scored her second goal of the finals and fifth of the state tournament with 22:14 remaining and Sophia Cho scored the game’s final goal.   

Montgomery Academy (20-0-1) earned its first state championship with a win over Trinity in the 2001 finals and have won eight more since 2011, compiling an 8-1 record in the last 10 state finals. 

St. John Paul II (17-5-0) was chasing after its first state championship.

Healey Mathison, the tournament’s most valuable player, scored the Wildcats’ third goal on a penalty kick with 20:30 remaining. 

Donoho’s Luke Ferguson scored for the Bulldogs with just over 15 minutes left, but the Wildcat defense proved to be too much for Donoho (21-1-2), which lost for the first time this season.

Hooper Academy has two sign scholarships

HOPE HULL -- Hooper Academy held a signing ceremony on Friday as friends, family and teammates celebrated the college signings of Dalton Hooper and Rusty Moseley.

Hooper, a linebacker for the Colts, accepted an offer to join the Huntingdon College football team this fall, while Moseley will join the Stillman College baseball team.

“They’re great leaders on and off the field,” Hooper Academy coach Marty Baker said. “I couldn’t ask for better guys for the rest of them to follow. They’ve built something special that the smaller ones can look up to and I’m truly going to miss that with those two. They’re team players first, they’re going to do exactly what I ask them to do when I ask them to do it and I never had to question their effort.”

Hooper was planning to attend Huntingdon College all along and major in business management.

“I applied to the school and whenever coach (Mike) Turk saw that I did, he knew who I was and offered me to come there as a preferred walk-on,” Hooper said. “It’s a blessing. I’m very excited to go there. They have a team full of sophomores and they’re only going to get better and my game will too, right along with them.”

Hooper said the Hawks plan to play him at outside linebacker, a position he often played with the Colts. 

“Dalton was the leader of our defense,” Baker said.”He led us in tackles and was a (AISA) football all-star. He was the rock of our defense.”

Moseley, an undersized lineman in football, thought baseball was his best option. He sent out a recruiting tape that caught the attention of Terrance Whittle, the Tigers’ baseball coach who has slowly built the program at Stillman.

“Basically, I just sent the coach an e-mail of my film,” Moseley said, “and he watched it and said he liked it. He invited me on a visit and I liked the school. They’re all young and have a lot of people coming back. They’ll be good this year. 

Moseley said he was offered an opportunity to try out both at third base and on the mound.

“It’s really exciting, knowing I’m going to get to play at the next level and get to improve my game,” Moseley said. “We’ll see what happens in the future.”

Baker said if Moseley works at his game in Tuscaloosa the way he worked at Hooper, he has no doubt the senior will make a contribution at the collegiate level. 

“Rusty was probably our best offensive lineman,” Baker said. “Rusty’s not huge for an offensive lineman but he got out there and did what I asked him to do and got so much better from his first year to this year.”