DELAND - St. Johns Country Day School girls soccer coach Mike Pickett lamented his Spartans' slow start in their 7-0 region final win over University Christian last week and junior Calli Berrang must have got the hint as her opening goal at just about 20 seconds into the Spartans Class 1A state semifinal match with South Florida HEAT of Sunrise, highlighted a lightning fast start by St. Johns en route to a 6-0 win and a spot in the Class 1A final on Saturday at 1 p.m. in Deland.
St. Johns will face Pine School of Hobe Sound, a 6-3 winner over Indian Rocks Christian in the opposite semifinal.
"Everyone played well tonight and we got all 25 girls on our roster in the game," said Pickett, now 19-3-1, with Pine School at 16-1-1. "We played pretty good defense, but they got some 60 yard breakaways that Pine has a great player, Giovanna Waksman, No. 30, that will take advantage of opportunities like that with goals for sure."
Waksman, only a sophomore, scored three of the six goals for Pine School in their semifinal win over Indian Rocks.
Waksman, with 158 goals in 39 games played in her career and an astounding 84 goals (tops in USA) this season, has been with the Brazil national U14, U15 and U20 teams (U20s as a 14 year old) in her career and was the Florida High School player of the year in 2022/23.
"She is definitely the best player we will ever face, but that team has plenty of other talented players that can move the ball quickly," said Pickett. "Our defense (with nine straight shutouts) will have to keep her in front of them and not let her get loose."
Against the HEAT, after Berrang's free kick goal off the left side that arched into the upper right corner of the net, both teams seemed intent on keeping the ball near the midfield stripe until St. Johns senior Kaitly Sunderhaus broke away, but got hammered by three HEAT defenders inside the goal box.
Senior CeCe Nowicki expertly nailed the ensuing penalty kick for a 2-0 lead just before the first half water break.
Right after the water break, junior Reygan Ropero got a servie pass from sophomore Madisyn Bauman from right to left that Ropero buried for a 3-0 lead that stayed until halftime.
"We still have to work on finishing our corner kicks because we had a lot of great services from the corners, but did not finish them in front of the goal," said Pickett, noting Berrang had a chance on a header that sailed just over the cross bar a few minutes after Ropero's goal.
"We can't afford to not put those balls in the net against Pine because they will challenge us," said Pickett.
Into the second half, Ropero found Berrang quickly for Berrang's second score with a goal just into the 47th minute.
St. Johns took advantage of their overall team depth and team speed to score a fifth goal with Nowicki taking a corner kick assist from freshman Alana Mantello for the fifth goal of the night.
Just one minute after Nowicki's goal, Ropero ran the ball deep into the left side corner adjacent to the HEAT goal and then pitched a left footed feed to Victoria Sarka who head balled the final tally of the night.
After emptying his bench to give his young players some state championship experience, the Spartans gave up two free kicks that seemed to danger their shutout streak but goalie Ava Lerche, an eighth grader, made one solid save after replacing senior Hadley Dantzler, who also made a free kick save to preserve the shutout.