Written by Henry Mallory

With the girls soccer season coming to an end, let’s recap over the highs, lows, and the future of the Crosstown High 2023 women’s soccer team. 

To begin the season, Crosstown had a rough match against Brighton, losing 3-1 on Brighton’s home turf. After this match they faced Lakeland and St. Mary’s, both of which they lost by four goals. Although the start of the season was a little shaky, Crosstown made a major comeback with a four-game winning streak to finish out their regular season games. 

Once the playoffs started, Crosstown dominated in every game winning 3-2 over East High School, and 7-0 over Memphis Rise Academy. In the most recent game Crosstown faced Lakeland Prep for the second time this season. Although Crosstown lost 5-1 in the first match against Lakeland, they bounced back to limit Lakeland to a close 0-1 loss in the second match. Unfortunately, to end Crosstown’s impressive season, they faced East High school for a third time. With only 30 seconds left in the game, Abigail Carroll scored a clutch goal to tie the game 2-2. After a 2-2 draw, the game went to a penalty shootout with our girls narrowly losing to a score of 4-2. 

Let’s talk about some of the key players whose consistent ability to perform lead to Crosstown’s success. To begin, the back line consists of several talented players, one of which, Alyssa Flowers, has been dominating throughout the entirety of the season. Alyssa’s physicality has led to Crosstown’s defensive success and limited the amount of shots on Crosstown’s goalkeeper, Macy Pearson. Another key defender for Crosstown has been Polina Kostina, Polina’s been a leader in limiting the balls splitting through the defensive line, and pushing the ball up the field almost every time she receives the ball.  Crosstown’s midfield has been a key factor in the team’s success throughout the season. Abigail Carroll and Madeline Lareau have been the most influential players for Crosstown’s season. Abigail and Madeline both have the vision and power to find and play through balls as well as finish from well outside of the box. Abigail and Madeline are composed under pressure and seem to always know what to do with the ball once they receive it. Moving up to our forwards, Anna Lauritzen Wright and Kate Robinson have been essential players for Crosstown. Although Anna faced an injury late into the season, her contribution to Crosstown, pre-injury, was drastic. As only being a freshman the potential for Anna, as a player, is incredible. Kate and Anna have scored the most goals for Crosstown throughout the 2023 season and are both great players on the ball as well as their finishing ability. 

There is no way that I could get the full perspective of how the season went as a fan watching from the sidelines, so I took my questions to a player on the Crosstown High team, Polina Kostina. To begin, I asked Polina what the key factors were in her team’s success and what some of the weak points for Crosstown were. Polina said, “Having Abigail as holding mid helped a lot in putting pressure on the other team because of Abigail’s endurance and technical ability. The trust that the team had for Abigail gave the team confidence because she is a player that you can always rely on passing the ball too under pressure.” When asked about the weak points of the team, Polina stated, “The team’s finishing ability was extremely poor compared to last year, and it felt like it took a ton of effort to finish scoring opportunities.” As for the future of the team Polina hopes that the team is more happy with their performance. She feels as if her team had some good games this year, but it wasn’t as consistent as the team had hoped for. She also believes that qualifying for state shouldn’t be the end goal for Crosstown, because it isn’t a good model of how the season went. It just reflects that Crosstown has the ability to beat some of the less developed teams in their district which allows them to go to state, instead of having games that challenge the team and help them grow.

As for the future of Crosstown, the roster will remain fairly similar, except for the loss of seniors Elena Pappas and Jazmin Flores. The team has a ton of potential for the upcoming 24-25 school year, and will come back stronger and more talented next year.