The Coughlin girls soccer team is on quite the ride. At least that's how they describe this season.
"A roller coaster," Emma Sukowaski said. "We had a loss against Lehman and that like really put our spirits down. But that win against Dallas, I cried. I balled my eyes out."
And that was just one of the Crusaders' 15 wins this year. A big reason why? Mary Tona, with over 100 career goals now. It starts with her.
"This year, it's amazing the stats that she's put up because we actually moved her back into the midfield," head coach Joe Spagnuolo Jr. said. "She's still averaging two to three goals a game."
"She's a beast. She really is," Sukowaski added. "Because I remember like, way back when. She grew up to be such a great player."
"I just try to have all my teammates play with the same heart that I play with," Tona said. "If we're getting everybody to play with a hundred percent on the field, then we're good."
Tona's team is more than good. They're in sole possession of first place in the WVC with just two games left to play. But they're not getting ahead of themselves.
"You can't reach the postseason goal and you can't reach the regular season goal unless you take care of the individual game goals," Spagnuolo Jr. said.
"We're just taking them as normal games," Tona added. "We know where we are. We think that if we do everything that we've been doing, that we can come through."
And finally capture that conference title.
"That means we get to go like down in history in the school and we get jackets which is also kind of awesome!" Sukowaski admitted. "But it's gonna mean so much with this team because we worked so hard and have come up short every year for the past two years."
"This senior class hasn't won any titles," Spagnuolo Jr. said. "They haven't won a league title. They haven't won a district title. So getting a league title is very important."
You also have to give a lot of credit to coach Spagnuolo Jr. But he actually wants to do more in Plains. He's running for Magisterial District Judge. As he put it, it's the same reason he got into coaching. He just loves Plains and he wants to give back to this community.
