Teamwork Helps Springfield Lightning Win U14 Championship Game for 2nd Straight Season.

The Springfield Lightning U14 soccer team (9-0-1) went into their Intercounty Youth Soccer League (ICYSL) finals match looking forward to a rematch with Clark's U14 team. It felt like deja vu; this was the same Clark team they faced just seven months earlier in the ICYSL Fall Finals. Springfield had faced Clark just 2 times before.

The two teams tied in their regular season meeting last Fall and  tied in regulation time during their November, Fall ICYSL Championship game, leading to two overtime periods and ultimately resulting in a best of five shoot out where Springfield took the title with a 2-0 final score.

After competing with eleven other teams in the Spring regular season, Lightning now had the opportunity to defend their ICYSL title against the same Clark team.  Carlos Oliveira, Clark's coach, told Lightning's Coach Jeff Shanes before the game that he was hoping for this rematch because the teams were very evenly matched in skills, spirit and sportsmanship.

The two teams played tough through the first half without scoring. Then with just 4 minutes left in regulation time, the Lightning team put together an impressive series of passes that involved at least four players and worked the ball right to the goal where Gabriel Oguh powered the ball in to score the game winning goal.  After the game Coach Oliveira came over to congratulate Coach Shanes and told him this was one of the most evenly matched and exciting games he had seen played and that he attributes Springfield Lightning's win to the great teamwork and unselfish play among the Lightning players.

Coach Shanes said after the game that the core of his team has played together for over six seasons and he is very proud that the team has developed from a group of individual boys who could not win a game in their first two seasons to a team of young men who learned to work together to accomplish their goal of winning back to back championships.