Soccer: Slammers win national title

There was a time when Lizzie Barbaresi remembers being a 7-year-old starting out in club soccer with friends like Olivia Khoury, Samantha Falasco and Tara Morris.

They played on an Under-8 team for Newport Beach-based Slammers FC. It wasn’t pretty.

“We lost every single game, but I think that really helped us in the long run,” Barbaresi said.

Eleven years later, the local quartet of Newport-Mesa residents are going their separate ways. Soon they’ll be off to college, but before they go, they helped Slammers FC take home the ultimate prize.

The Slammers FC Under-18 girls won the Elite Clubs National League national championship on Tuesday, defeating the Michigan Hawks, 2-0, in the title game in Oceanside.

Barbaresi, who grew up in Newport Beach and played soccer at St. Margaret’s, was an outside midfielder and outside back. Khoury and Falasco, who both just graduated from Estancia, played center midfielder and center back, respectively. Morris, a recent Mater Dei graduate and Newport Beach resident, played defender.

There were other locals on the team, coached by Ziad Khoury. Recent Sage Hill School graduate Lexi Magliarditi contributed as a scoring option up top, as did Newport Beach resident Carly Malatskey, a recent Tarbut V’Torah graduate and the team captain.

Sage Hill graduate Claire Novotny played on the team throughout the regular season but did not participate in the national championship tournament due to a school commitment, Ziad Khoury said.

Khoury just laughed when asked about the team’s abundant local connection, players who helped Slammers FC bring home the club’s 11th national title.

“Who would have thought that many local kids from Newport Beach would go and win the national championship at U18?” he said. “I did ... It was just a great journey for these kids. They believed in each other. They defied all the odds. Four years in a row they’ve been in the final four, and finally they’re able to win it in their last year. It’s an unbelievable accomplishment.”

Last year the Slammers tasted heartbreak, suffering a 1-1 tie against Players Development Academy of New Jersey at nationals in Virginia. Khoury said that PDA, which went on to win the national title, scored the tying goal in the eighth minute of stoppage time. The Slammers were eliminated due to goal differential.

“It’s still hard for us to think about that game last year,” said Malatskey, who led the team with 11 goals this year in the regular season and is bound for Stanford. “We were literally so close. This year, I don’t know, it was different. We all felt very calm and confident. We knew this was our year. We deserved it; we had deserved it for so long.”

The Slammers U-18s went 16-1-3 in the regular season, winning the ECNL Southwest Conference to earn a berth to nationals in Oceanside. There, they defeated the Dallas Texans and FC Stars of Massachusetts, both by 2-0 scores, as well as playing Mountain View Los Altos Soccer Club to a 1-1 draw.

The Dallas Texans had former Dallas Cowboy Charles Haley’s daughter Madison, a top forward who’s a Stanford commit. The daughters of fellow Cowboys greats and NFL Hall of Famers Tony Dorsett and Emmitt Smith were also on the team.

“I grew up watching these guys,” Ziad Khoury said. “They’re my idols. I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan, a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan. It’s like, ‘Hey man, can I shake your hand?’”

But, after winning Group C, it was time for more serious business. The Slammers had to face PDA again in the national semifinals on Monday. This time, the Slammers won, 2-1, in penalty kicks. Falasco, bound for Arizona, said it gave her team a real boost.

“Being able to win that game, because of what happened last year, was so rewarding and made us feel so confident about the next day,” Falasco said.

The national championship game against the Michigan Hawks was scoreless at halftime. But U.S. Under-19 women’s national team player Leah Pruitt, who just finished her freshman year at San Diego State, gave the Slammers a 1-0 lead with a header goal. Three minutes later, Falasco scored on a corner kick that curved into the goal, and the Slammers were on their way to the title.

“Honestly, I think we were a lot more hungry than other teams,” said Barbaresi, who will play soccer at George Washington University in St. Louis. “This is seen as kind of the year where kids start focusing on college, get sidetracked with all of these senior year events. Our coach, Ziad, kept us really focused with that winning mentality where all the kids would show up to practice three days a week. I think that’s why we were so hungry and prepared when it came to game time.”

College comes next. Morris is playing at Pepperdine, Magliarditi at Duke and Novotny at Grand Canyon University.

But they will also always remember how they ended their Slammers careers with a bang.

“This past week has been incredible,” Malatskey said. “That was the last thing that I wanted to do. Coming into 2016, I knew it could be possibly the best year yet, because of winning a national championship with Slammers. I’m just so happy to bring it home for Slammers, and I’m so excited to start a new journey with Stanford and hopefully win national championships with them.”

Ziad Khoury said the Slammers are close to another prize. The Under-15 and Under-17 girls’ teams have each made the national semifinals next week in Maryland, he said. If they combine to win just one more game, the Slammers as a club would win the overall ECNL national title for the second time in five years, having won it in 2012.

“The 18s won [the national title], the 17s are in the final four, the 16s lost in the [quarterfinals] and the 15s are in the final four,” Khoury said. “It’s unprecedented. It’s never been done before, where a club has four different age groups qualify to the quarterfinals or further. We’re rewriting history here.”

Especially for the four girls who have put a decade-plus into the program, going out on top is sweet.

“I honestly couldn’t think of any better way to finish my club career, especially with such an amazing team,” Falasco said. “It was a perfect finish for us.”