Port Clinton's winningest season ever ends with sectional final loss

PORT CLINTON — Soccer can be a cruel game. Port Clinton's girls soccer program spent the past four seasons growing from a team everyone wanted to play into a team that no one wanted to play. But that run, at least in its current form, was halted by a single misplaced tackle on the wrong part of the field at the wrong time. "I just felt we were unlucky today," Port Clinton coach Paco Romero said. PC (14-3-0) ended its winningest season in program history with a 1-0 loss to Maumee (3-11-3) in a sectional final Saturday at True Lay Stadium. The Panthers' lone goal came on a second-half penalty kick from Evelyn Boyett. Port Clinton, which had made headlines from the very outset of the season by scoring boatloads of goals, failed to score for the first time all season. "I wish I could pinpoint, but there's moments here that we could've done better," Port Clinton senior Katerina Fillmore said. "I mean, what can you do? There's nothing you can do. We tried our best. We didn't give up. I'm proud of us for that." In 2018, when Fillmore and her eight fellow seniors were freshmen, they walked into a program that hadn't won a game the year before. That season, they won just once. There's no playbook for turning it around from there. Port Clinton isn't a massive community with soccer players growing on trees. But it is tight-knit and supportive of its own, and as it turned out, that's exactly what the Redskins needed to change their fortunes. Fillmore and her classmates — Avery Joseph, Gabbi Porter, Rebekah Nehls, Alexis Spears, Paeja Leow, Paige Cuevas, Brooke Martinez and Jasmine Biers — built bonds in the school building that carried over to the field. They pushed each other in ways that wouldn't see payoff right away. And they found that, over time, it was possible to turn a bottom-feeder into a winner. "Getting to go to school together and be in the classroom and see us grow in that way and then come to the field after and grow in this way," Fillmore said. "It's a family. I've grown up with my seniors. My sister's on the team. I've seen so much improvement by all of them." By the time Port Clinton took the field in 2021, it was coming off a .500 record last season and had a healthy stock of non-seniors filling in the holes around the veterans. And right away, PC showed it'd be a force. In game one, Port Clinton put 10 past Keystone. Then it was five, then eight, then 10, then three and eight and five. "We accomplished a lot of things regardless of this game," Fillmore said. PC's only two losses of the regular season came to Ottawa County rival and traditional power Oak Harbor. But even Rockets coach Renee Williamson recognized the change in Port Clinton. Williamson said that before the year, her players wanted to know who their biggest contender in the SBC Bay Division would be. Williamson told them it'd be Port Clinton. She saw the growth year to year, the young talent coming up through the ranks, and the two-decade coach at Oak Harbor was right. Port Clinton didn't win the Bay due to its losses to the Rockets, but the Redskins won every other league game, and every other game, before Saturday. "These girls have started something that will continue for the next number of years," Romero said. "We have a lot of girls that have been investing a lot of time into the youth program and our program." It'd be fair to say Maumee wasn't the better team at True Lay Stadium. The Panthers, whose poor record reflected an extremely difficult regular season schedule, mostly sat behind the ball to defend against Port Clinton's lofted passes over the top. But that meant Maumee rarely carried the ball much past midfield in attack before the Redskins recycled it back into the attacking third. Port Clinton failed to take its chances, though. Consistent goal scorers who'd combined for 87 goals in 2021 found themselves with chances in the box but couldn't finish. Maumee keeper Aubrey Hiles, the tallest player on the pitch, deserved some credit for two massive saves she made in quick succession with 20 minutes remaining. But as the chances kept coming and going, it became apparent it was just one of those days for Port Clinton. "We kept our heads up," Fillmore said. "We kept going, and obviously we didn't want it to end this way." Maumee's penalty came with 32 minutes to play. On a counterattack, the Panthers drove into the 18-yard box before Port Clinton's defenders all converged toward the ball. But the timing wasn't quite right as two PC players crashed into the attacker, a straightforward penalty decision. Boyett stepped up and pulled an unsaveable shot into the left corner. Port Clinton created a few chances in the closing minutes, including a free kick from the left wing and then a corner kick with less than 60 seconds to play. But none of them ended up in the back of the net. "I couldn't see (the penalty call)," Romero said. "I'll side with the referee's sight and what he called was what he called. We had a couple opportunities that we couldn't convert on." It didn't take long at the final whistle for the tears to start flowing on the Port Clinton sideline. Fillmore acknowledged that the most likely outcome was a season-ending loss at some point, but it wasn't supposed to be Saturday in her final game at her home turf with a zero on PC's part of the scoreboard. But when Port Clinton thinks back on the 2021 girls soccer season, it won't remember a shutout. The memories will be filled with goals, from long distance and off headers and on free kicks and after scrums in front of the goalie. The finishes came in all shapes and sizes for the Redskins, and by the midway point of the season, the goals didn't even prompt major celebrations because they were so commonplace. Each and every one of those goals, though, was special because of what they represented: growth. In 2018, Port Clinton scored nine goals the entire season. The 2021 Redskins beat that total in a single game twice and finished with 87 for the campaign. Port Clinton's girls soccer players will have varying paths from here. Many of the seniors played their last game of competitive soccer. The returners will have added motivation after the pain they felt from Saturday's loss. "It's a family," Fillmore said. "We lose together. We win together. And I think they'll carry that on with them next year." But no matter where life takes them next, they'll have the 2021 season to call upon in their mind. They set a new standard. They overwhelmed opposing goalkeepers and danced to their warmup playlist and brought community members who didn't know much about soccer out to watch them play. Port Clinton's 2021 girls soccer team left a legacy, regardless of how the season ended. "It's a small town," Fillmore said. "You don't see a team go from winning no games to this, breaking records, in a short four years. It's a community. It's not just the soccer team. It's the football coming to support us. It's everyone being together. It's made it really enjoyable."