The Lakewood Rangers soccer team capped off their most successful regular season in school history last Wednesday with an 8-0 victory over Elyria to clinch the Northern Ohio Conference Lake Division Championship. The Rangers improved their record to 3-0-1 in NOC and finished the regular season with a 6-7-3 record. Goalkeeper Carrie Moran recorded her fifth shutout of the season. According to the Ohio Scholastic Soccer Coaches Association web page, Moran finished the regular season seventh in the state in saves with 137.

“[Carrie] is a leader,” Rangers first-year head coach Joshua Thornsberry said. “The other girls look up to her. She has kept us in a lot of games this season.” Thornsberry returned home to Ohio this season to take over a Rangers program that has struggled in recent seasons. He played his high school soccer at Lorain’s Southview High School and did his student teaching at Lakewood before beginning his coaching career in North Carolina. “I came in knowing the team had not achieved in the past so I sat down with my seniors and we figured out how to make positive changes,” Thornsberry said.

Those six seniors; Nadia Derezic, Jamie Meggas, Hilary Vigh, Morgan Schroeder, Rachel Niemi and Danielle Pusateri became leaders both on and off the field. Meggas and Niemi tied for the team lead in goals with four each. Schroeder led Lakewood with five assists. The Rangers expected Pusateri to be one of the area top goal scorers but her season came to a crashing halt when she broke her leg in an early season game at Twinsburg. Lakewood, with a record of 1-3 going into that game, used Pusateri’s injury as a rallying point and defeated the Tigers’ on a goal by freshman Missy Richardson and went on to go 3-1-1 in the next five games.

By playing team oriented soccer and winning the first divisional championship in school history the Rangers achieved two of their pre-season goals. To achieve their final goal of winning at least one tournament game, Lakewood will have to beat Twinsburg again. Despite beating out the Tigers for the Lake division championship and defeating them earlier in the season, Lakewood was seeded 11th in the Division I University Heights Sectional and must now travel to Twinsburg to take on the eighth seeded Tigers in a sectional game tomorrow night at 7:00pm. The winner of that game will take second-seeded Padua Bruins Saturday, October 20 at 3pm.

Thornsberry said there are advantages and disadvantages to playing a league foe in the sectionals. “It's nice to know their players and know you won’t get beat on something you haven’t seen yet. However, it is tough to beat a team twice in one season.” The true measure of the Rangers’ success this season won’t be measured on this years' tournament brackets but in the future successes of the program. The season started with 30 girls on the roster but injuries have forced Lakewood to play without substitutes in some games this season.

‘Winning the division was important,” Thornsberry said. “It will make the program stronger in years to come. This year’s seniors have helped me to build the framework of what should become a successful program.”