Resilient Ransom girls soccer team overcomes injury, deficit to advance to state

Miami Herald

20-02-2025

Their starting goalkeeper suffered a severe, very likely season-ending injury just eight minutes into the game.
They blew a 2-0 lead and trailed by a goal with 20 minutes remaining in the match.
And yet neither setback stopped the Ransom Everglades girls' soccer team on Wednesday night.
The resilient Raiders remained even keel and emerged victorious following a rollercoaster of a 4-3 victory over visiting Palmer Trinity in the Region 4-2A championship match at Ransom Everglades.
Ransom (14-4-3) secured the program's first ever regional championship and trip to the state final four where it will take on Episcopal School of Jacksonville (12-5-3) in a Class 2A state semifinal on Thursday at either 4 or 7 p.m. at Spec Martin Stadium in DeLand.
'These girls deserve so much credit for enduring a pretty difficult situation to start the game and they never lost their composure,' Ransom Everglades coach Antonio Boada said. 'It's beautiful to make history when you can do it with people who work hard and like to progress. This is the culmination of all the hard work of these girls, our coaches, our administration, everyone and tomorrow the work begins to bring home a state championship.'
Freshman Charlie Jaffee's standing bicycle kick goal, which she looped over Palmer Trinity goalkeeper Valentina Herrera's reach and into the back of the net, broke a 3-3 tie with 4:06 remaining in the second half.
Ransom Everglades would then hold off a couple of last-ditch scoring chances by the Falcons (12-5-3) and punch their tickets to state next week.
'I wasn't really thinking, I kind of just did it,' Jaffee said. 'It kind of just happened. I think it hit me when everyone ran up to me and by the time I looked, all my teammates on top of me celebrating.'
The Raiders dealt with adversity almost from the start when senior goalkeeper Addison Pollock dove in to smother a ball just as Palmer Trinity junior midfielder Brooklyn Schiffrin came sliding in and collided with her. Pollock remained on the ground for several minutes and eventually left the field with the help of crutches and her left leg in an air cast after receiving medical attention.
Schiffrin received a yellow card after the play and exited the game briefly.
The incident seemed to energize Ransom, which struck twice over the next 16 minutes of play. Jojo James scored the second of those when she took a long ball from Stella Colombo, juked Herrera when she came out from the goal to challenge her and fired home a shot into an empty net.
Palmer Trinity, however, would respond when junior forward Scarlett Baur scored the first of three goals with 9:03 remaining to cut the deficit to 2-1.
Ten minutes into the second half, Baur struck again with a sensational 25-yard free kick, which caromed off Ransom backup goalie Lindsay Ng and into the back of the net.
A rush downfield with numbers in their favor in the 60th minute resulted in a go-ahead goal for the Falcons when Schiffrin crossed a ball to Baur, who tapped it home with her left foot.
But barely a minute later, Ransom answered when Colombo drove all the way into Palmer's 18-yard box and fired a shot at Herrera, which she blocked, but left too hard a rebound for James to collect and score to level the game at 3.
'We played Palmer twice this season and they were pretty rough games, but we fought it out,' said Colombo, who finished with two assists. 'We didn't let what happened to our goalkeeper get in our heads. We told each other that it couldn't affect us. We got through it by supporting each other. Our word of the day was 'manifest' and every single time we had the ball we manifested what was to come and that's state.'
Colombo then found Jaffee in traffic in front of the net, allowing her to react and lift the game-winning shot over her head and into the goal.
'Our captains really calmed us down and we were playing for Addison and we wanted to show them,' Jaffee said. 'Just because they hurt our goalie, we had to show we could push through.'
Region 4-1A final - South Florida HEAT 5, Westwood Christian 0: South Florida HEAT (16-7) cruised and clinched its first trip to the state final four after coming up short three consecutive seasons in the regional finals. HEAT will face a monumental task when they take on 14-time state champion Orange Park St. Johns Country Day on Wednesday in a state semifinal at either 4 or 7 p.m. at Spec Martin Stadium in DeLand. The Warriors finished 12-2-2.