Girls Soccer: Flintridge Sacred Heart has perservered


Above: Flintridge Sacred Heart’s, from left to right, Samantha Norton, Pip Harragin, Bianca Garoian, Sinead Fleming and Isabelle Johnson, all seniors, helped the Tologs shatter the stigma that they’re underachievers. Not this season.

By Miguel A. Melendez
Staff Writer

Tonight won’t be just a “Senior Night” for the Flintridge Sacred Heart girls soccer team.

It will be a day of triumph and jubilation, not just because the Tologs clinched their first-ever Mission League championship, but because of the collective adversity they all had to overcome to reach the steep mountain’s peak.

Never mind the tenuous schedule that is the Mission League. Three of the top five teams in the CIF-Southern Section Division II Top 10 poll hail from the league.

Flintridge Sacred Heart is ranked No. 1 for the fifth consecutive week, and barring any losses the Tologs (15-4-3, 7-1-1) will earn the top seed when the playoff brackets are released Monday.

It was the team’s cohesiveness and unselfish attitude that got them there, but it’s their stronger bond off the pitch that truly resembles the Sacred Heart community, many of whom will arrive in droves when the Tologs take on Notre Dame today at 5:30 p.m. at St. Francis High.

Sinead Fleming, Pip Harragin, Bianca Garoian, Isabelle Johnson, Samantha Norton and Audra Krake will say goodbye, but — like so many others — never in spirit.

Four years ago, former Tologs player Jessica Hanson was in her final year at Loyola Marymount when she died after a car accident on her way to a family vacation.

Three months later, Janet Johnson, one of the team’s coaches, died of an undetected heart condition.

In September, the team accompanied Harragin to her father’s funeral, Mick Harragin, after he lost his battle with cancer.

Just two weeks ago, Flintridge Sacred Heart co-head coach Frank Pace lost his mother.

On the day he returned, Fleming scored the winning goal in the waning seconds to help the Tologs defeat Chaminade, 1-0.

The elusive league title was elusive no more.

After tonight’s game, is over, the girls will give Fleming and her family comfort when they attend her grandfather’s funeral. Kenneth Fleming, 84, died Sunday after suffering from pneumonia and a failing heart.

“It’s funny how life works,” Fleming’s mother, Rebecca, said. “You can experience such joy and pain in the time span of a few days. I know that he is very proud of Sinead. I also know that he is at peace.”

He’s not only in peace, but perhaps overlooking and more than ever so aware of Fleming’s many accomplishments. She will attend New Mexico on a soccer scholarship.

“We have a lot of angels looking down on us this year,” Pace said.

At a recent St. Francis boys soccer home game, Pace couldn’t take more than a few steps before someone congratulated him on the the team’s success.

But the sweet taste of success spreads beyond the team’s enjoyment.

“It means a lot to all the parents and girls in the program over the course of 14 years,” said Pace, who has coached the girls 11 years along with Kathy Desmond, who’s put in 14 years of her own. “We’re getting e-mails and phone calls from people who played here 15 years ago. We climbed a huge mountain.”

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