Lady Jags
CLAIM STATE TITLE
A
by Steve Gamel | photo courtesy of Flower Mound Lady Jags Soccer social media page
ll coaches pride themselves on having a solid game plan. Misail Tsapos simply took his to another level.
18-0-4 record on varsity last year before
COVID-19 cut the season short. This year, they went 24-1-2 and won the Class 6A state title.
Surrounded by talent since The title-clinching win the day he took over as “IT’S AN ATHLETIC came with a 2-1 win over the new Flower Mound GROUP, BUT MOST Austin Vandergrift on girls soccer coach six years April 16 at Birkelbach IMPORTANTLY, ago, Tsapos purposely Field in Georgetown. THEY ARE VERY kept a specific group of TALENTED SOCCER “It was very exciting,” freshmen together rather IQ WISE...” than splitting them up Tsapos said of the state title between his freshmen, JV, win. “We didn’t expect this and varsity teams. His thought was that type of success, but we figured that if we by playing together and getting quality kept them together, they’d start having minutes on the field, they’d eventually success — and success breeds more be unstoppable. success, which means they could have a He was right. Two years ago, that group went 20-0 on JV, then followed with an
chance at competing for something very special. It was a complete team effort.”
Flower Mound is no stranger to state titles in girls soccer. This was the
program’s second crown since 2016. And they did it by going through a
ridiculous gauntlet of opponents. They opened the playoffs with back-to-back 2-1 wins over Guyer and South Grand
Prairie before beating Prosper 3-1 in the
third round. From there, they’d allow just one goal in wins over Northwest Eaton
(5-0), Marcus (3-0), The Woodlands (4-0), and Vandegrift (2-1).
In the title game, the Lady Jags used two
second-half goals from senior Riley Baker to claim the win. Both came on assists
from Sydney Becerra and helped take control of what was a 1-1 stalemate at
one point in the match. Baker was named MVP of the title match. Becerra, Hallie Augustyn, Tatum Beck, Emma Hoang,
and Skye Leah were all named to the alltournament team. Shortly after the win,
Tsapos was named the TASCO Region I coach of the year.
Naturally, Tsapos deflected all praise and said his job was made easier with such a great group of athletes.
“It’s an athletic group, but most
importantly, they are very talented
soccer IQ wise,” he said. “They maintain
possession of the ball, and when we set
a game plan, they stick to that game plan. It makes my job so much easier. They
adjust on the fly, but they also dictate the tempo and force opponents to play our style. A lot of teams couldn’t do that.”
As for the future, it appears that history
may repeat itself very soon. Not only will Tsapos return seven starters from this
year’s team, but his JV — which has also been kept together for a few years — was undefeated this year.
“It will be hard to replace some of these
kids, but we did the same thing with our JV this year,” Tsapos said. “They were
good enough to play on varsity, but we wanted to keep them together and get them playing time.” www.LiveLocalMagazines.com
MAY 2021 | FLOWER MOUND TOWN LIFE | 43
