May, 2024
By Anali Garcia, Staff Reporter
The varsity girls soccer team brought home its first ever state championship with a dominant 5-1 win over Houston’s YES Prep East-End on Saturday, May 5 at Rice University in Houston. The Honor Charters Athletics League (HCAL) championship is the first state championship for any female athletics program at KAC.
It was a fitting end to a season in which the team often overwhelmed their opponents, but was nonetheless, in the words of Head Coach Jonathan Avila, a rollercoaster. The win came just three weeks after the Cardinals lost a chance for a state championship in the other league they compete in, TSCAAL. That hope ended in April in the TSCAAL state semi-finals, where the team lost in 3-2 in overtime after easily defeating all of their previous playoff opponents. But the girls did not let this loss bring them down from all their hard work from this year with all the hard practices, hard games, and forming amazing team bonds. Instead, they used it as motivation for their HCAL playoffs, and that allowed them to end the season as champions.
This year’s team consisted of 18 girls with five captains: Viviana Vallejo, Bailey Tavira, Samantha Vallejo, Adriana, and Ruby Aviles. Each captain allowed the success of this team in many unique and different ways.
Coach Avila expressed that he is proud of this team for their hard work and accomplishments. He stated his girls have work from start to finish with giving up time an energy to have a successful team this year. Finally, Avila shouted out everyone on the team along with the team members’ parents, because, he said, when the team had bumps in the road the parents were there with them for everything.
The Cardinal Post 