FAYETTEVILLE – The Greenfield School girls soccer team displayed resiliency in spades this year, bouncing back from a slow start to the season amid the loss of its top two scorers from 2021, finishing strong and making a run to the North Carolina Independent Schools Association 1-A State Championship game for the second year in a row. 

The Knights, who won the title last year, showed plenty of that resiliency despite coming up short in a loss to Grace Christian, bouncing back from a 1-0 halftime deficit to take a 2-1 lead before falling 3-2. 

“As my seven-year-old put it, it was intense,” said Greenfield head coach Randol Mendoza.  “It was a roller coaster of emotion.”

The Knights of the 1-A/2-A Coastal Plain Independents Conference, who finished the season 11-6-2, struggled in the first half, as the Crusaders (21-5-1) of the Mid-Carolina Conference took a 1-0 lead into the break. 

“To me, the difference in today’s game was the first 40 minutes of the game,” Mendoza said. “It took us 40 minutes to kind of wake up and get going and they capitalized in 40 minutes and got a 1-0 lead. In the second half, we tied 2-2 as far as score lines. I feel like we didn’t perform and create opportunities enough in the first 40 minutes of the game.” 

The Knights came out firing in the second half, however. In the game’s 48th minute, Yasmine Bulluck tied it at one, before senior Juliette Suarez-Robles, off an assist from Eliza Taylor, but Greenfield up 2-1 in the 58th minute. 

A minute later, however, the Crusaders tied the game via a Greenfield own goal off a corner kick, and took the lead for good on a free kick from 23 yards out with six minutes left. 

Greenfield tallied 13 shots in the game, and Jeallen Holland notched 10 saves in goal. 

While the Knights didn’t get the result they wanted, however, they could leave the game feeling good about fighting back, just as they had all season. 

“I’m really proud of my team,” Suarez-Robles said. “I think it was really noticeable how hard we were working. I think when we went into halftime, coach gave us a talk, and we all knew that it was only 1-0 so we knew that we had a good chance at making a comeback. So I’m proud of our effort in the second half.”

The Knights started the season 1-2-2, as Greenfield adjusted to the loss of Serenity McNair and Kat Stanley, who combined for over 70 goals for last year’s state championship team. 

Greenfield regrouped and bounced back, however, and went 10-3 the rest of the way going into the state title game. 

“It was a challenge, but each game, we grew,” Mendoza said. “Then we would play a good team and lose a game, and that would force us to get better and reinvent ourselves. It was a different ride to this state championship vs. last year, but for us to make it to the state championship game, it was all based on the hard work and the progression of the season throughout the course of the spring season.” 

The state championship game marked the end of the Greenfield careers of seniors Suarez-Robles, Urvi Patel, Libby Eagles, Lily Hesse and Monica Mann. 

Mendoza said the seniors played a key role in Greenfield’s turnaround, and the hope is the younger players will carry lessons they learned from them forward. 

“It’s meant everything to me,” Suarez-Robles said. “I’ve only been here for two years, but I think it’s been the two best years of soccer that I’ve ever had. I’m really grateful that I got to have a good season for my last year. I’m going to miss the girls a lot, but I hope that they remember how we’re all feeling right now, and that they can make something out of it next year.” 

Greenfield also had a number of freshmen and sophomore players on the team in 2022, many of whom played in their first state championship game Saturday. 

Mendoza hopes that experience will prove valuable going forward, and help the Knights know what to expect if they make it back to the final round. 

“It helps them,” Mendoza said. “They kind of grow numb to the moment. For some, a lot of it has to do with nerves if you’ve never been in a game of this magnitude for some of them. … It’s going to be valuable in the seasons to come, because they’re going to remember what that felt like. They may remember how nervous they were the first time they were here, but the hope is we come back and we land in another state championship and we bring that experience and we can manage and control that experience a little bit better than we did today.”