FC Bucks won it all for Pawlowski
Vipers’ made officers’ death a title quest
By Steve ShermanSports Editor
The FC Bucks Vipers (E-PA) made history this summer when they capped their national tour off with the slimmest of victories over Ohio Elite.
In so doing, the group became the first girls soccer team in Pennsylvania to claim a U.S. Youth Soccer national championship.
While this group of girls--together since they were 8-years-old--had been down this road before, coming up short in last year’s national championship, this year’s run took on significant meaning in February when Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawlowski Jr. was gunned down in the city’s Olney section.
Pawlowski was Vipers head coach Eddie Leigh’s son-in-law, married to his daughter Kim, a 2007 graduate of St. Joseph’s University and all Atlantic-10 midfielder for the Hawks who watched the Vipers grow from youngsters into future Division-I prospects.
Pennington School senior Kaitlyn Kerr, an FC Bucks forward, detailed the team’s relationship to their coach’s daughter.
“She came to many of our practices; we were close to her,” stated Kerr. “She had just gotten back from her honeymoon so it was a real heartbreaker.”
This year’s U.S. Youth Soccer Region I Champion, the Vipers pulled off their unlikely victory July 26 on a Maddie Evans goal that sent the girls home with the Francis J. Kelly Cup.
The quest for the cup this season was completed in honor of Pawlowski after the policeman was gunned down breaking up an altercation between a cab driver and his assailant.
“Coach [Leigh] is like a second father to us,” explained Kerr. “When that happened, it hurt everybody on the team.”
“We wanted to do this--to win it for him, for Kim for Police Officer Pawlowski.
“When we first heard about what happened, we just wanted it so much more,” stated Heidi Sabatura, a forward from Lawrenceville. “The tragedy increased our passion for winning.”
In a national tourney that began July 21 at Citizens Bank Fields at Progin Park in Lancaster, Massachusetts, FC Bucks kicked off the tournament with a 3-1 victory over Pleasanton Rage. Evans ignited the Vipers with a pair of strikes. Sabatura, a recent Pennington School graduate headed to Villanova, chipped in with a goal of her own.
Heidi detailed the Vipers’ quest for national glory.
“Mr. Leigh has had a rough year with his son-in-law getting killed,” she said.
“When that happened, we tried to put all of our effort into winning.
It was a force that lasted the entire 2009 campaign.
“It seemed like we were thinking about [Pawlowski’s killing] all season long,” explained Sabatura. “We tried to make things better for coach so we went ahead and gave it our all.”
As an encore, FC Bucks blanked Edmond Soccer Club (ESC Black), 2-0, Thursday, July 23. Jen Hoy, a forward from Sellersville who is headed to Princeton, opened up the scoring for the Vipers and Sabatura finished things off with her goal that came off a feed from Kerr.
On Sunday morning, the last day of the tourney, the Vipers took on Ohio Elite, a Cincinnati team that won Region II this year. Ohio entered the finale with an identical 2-0-1 mark, having battled FC Bucks to a 2-2 deadlock on July 24.
In the championship however, after the sides battled to a scoreless standoff in the first half, Evans scored the game’s only goal in the 70th minute, sending the girls home national champions.
“This is what we looked forward to for years and years,” stated Sabatura. “This was always our goal. It’s just incredible--we finally reached it and won.”
When tragedy first struck, it naturally pulled Leigh from the grips of the team. Among other things, the head coach was busy helping Kim take care of baby John III, whom she’d been pregnant with at the time of her husband’s killing.
No worries; assistant coach Richie Sheridan made sure that FC Bucks didn’t come unglued, said Kerr.
“He was always there when Coach Leigh could not,” explained Kerr. “And he brought something extra to the team; we never would have been able to win it without him.”
It was that type of team chemistry that helped win the national title, said Kerr.
“We’re not just a bunch of superstars,” stated Kerr. “Other teams have nationally-ranked players; we don’t.”
“We come together as a team and work together as a group.”
Even the head coach was on board with the girls’ reasons for winning.
“The kids were just devastated at everything that happened,” stated Leigh. “This was just something they wanted to do.”
Mission accomplished, it would appear.
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