After losing its second sections game to Hopkins Oct. 16, senior and captain Sophia Romero said despite the loss, she was proud of the team’s performance. 

“I would have loved to continue on and go to the section finals, but I think that we played a hard game and we gave it everything we had,” Romero said. “I’m okay with how the results turned out.”

Head coach Anne Beaton said being brand new to the program affected the team’s performance at the start of the season. Beaton said the improvement was especially clear by the end of the season, as they won eight of their last ten games prior to the loss against Hopkins.

“I’m super proud of the girls (this) season. I feel like there was a steep learning curve that came in not knowing me and maybe not understanding my approach,” Beaton said. “Then they were one by one adopting (my approach) and committing themselves to it and then you saw our record go from 0-6 to where we’re at now, 8-9.”

According to sophomore Anna Turcotte, the improvement in comparison to its last game against Hopkins Sept. 17, in which Park lost 7-2, was very obvious.

“I thought it was a tough game. We played a lot better than the last time though so I’m happy about that,” Turcotte said. “We’ve gotten better as a team, and knowing our positions and what to do. We had a good attack, especially at times we made them really nervous and they had to kick the ball out a lot.”

Beaton said she was happy with the perseverance players showed, even when they were losing.

“Anytime you get scored on it’s disappointing.” Beaton said. “Especially when players are younger, like high school age, it takes a while to learn how to reset and shake it off and move up to the next thing, but we did that (today).”

Romero said she is sad that her time playing for Park has ended, but she was satisfied with the progress the team made this season.

“I realized with about five minutes left in the game that this was probably gonna be the last five minutes of my high school soccer career, but ultimately I was okay with it, because getting to the second round of sections was a feat in itself,” Romero said. “In order to get there we beat Southwest (who) we lost to in the first round — honestly, I’m okay with it because we got the redemption that we wanted.”