ABILENE – Entering the 2023 season, the Abilene High girls’ soccer team hadn’t won a district title since 1992, hadn’t won a playoff match since 2007, and hadn’t reached the playoffs since 2017.
On the outside, there wasn’t much reason to think much of that would change this year as the Lady Eagles welcomed first-year head coach Tiffany Van Hoose as the program’s new leader. Van Hoose, a standout at Hardin-Simmons University from 2014-17, had coached club teams but never led a high school squad.
However, that all turned around in 2023 as Van Hoose led the Lady Eagles to a 10-1-1 record in District 4-5A and the program’s first district title in 31 years. The Lady Eagles – ranked No. 15 in the latest UIL Girls’ State Coaches’ Rankings – are 15-2-2 overall and are back in the playoffs this season. They will open the Class 5A playoffs against Amarillo Palo Duro (1-12-1, 0-5-1 in District 3-5A) on March 24 at 5 p.m. at Frenship High School.
Van Hoose, who should be a lock for District 4-5A Coach of the Year honors, took over a team that was 3-9-5 last season and had won just 32 matches from 2018-22. However, she said she felt a positive vibe with her team the first time they met.
“When I came in and talked to the girls, I asked them what they wanted from this season,” she said. “I knew what I wanted but asked them about a realistic standard. They said they just wanted to win. They wanted to compete and wanted someone who believed in them and would push them to be their very best.”
It didn’t take long for Van Hoose to see what she had in her 2023 squad. The Lady Eagles tied former district rival Odessa Permian, 2-2, early in the season but came back a few days later and beat the same team 4-0. She said that win gave her an early indication that this team wouldn’t settle for “good enough.”
“Those two teams tied 1-1 last year, so that was kind of my gauge for this season for where we are and what we can be,” Van Hoose said. “But after we turned right around and beat them pretty handily, I knew they wouldn’t be satisfied settling for ties. That wasn’t the standard, and they wanted to be better.”
And the Lady Eagles have been better. They recorded seven shutouts, going 6-0-1 in those matches, as they allowed just 16 goals in 19 matches. They won matches by the scores of 8-0, 5-0, 6-1, and 4-0, blowouts in soccer.
Van Hoose said it’s almost a miracle the defense has played as well as it has, particularly in goal, where the Lady Eagles began practice last fall without a true goalkeeper. Hailie Chavez had been a field player but volunteered to play in goal with another field player, Cora Hack, backing her up. Also, Van Hoose moved some players into other positions, flipping them from offensive players to the back line to play defense and give the team more quickness on the back end.
The key was finding a goalkeeper even though they have rotated through three of them because of injury.
“Hailie really stepped up and worked hard to make that position her own,” Van Hoose said. “She started strong, but then she got a concussion, and we had to put in our backup keeper (Hack), who played a couple of matches before she broke her wrist.”
That meant a call-up from the junior varsity for Trinity Escobedo, who was the starter in goal for the JV. She played through the first half of district play until Chavez returned for the second half of district play.
The defense was sustained by an offense that has scored 44 goals on the season, led by 16 from Laila Brown and another 12 from Justine Martinez. But it’s the balanced scoring that Van Hoose believes is the key to her team’s success. Eleven players have scored goals for the Lady Eagles this season, and it’s in those blowout wins where Van Hoose sees her team working at its best.
“My favorite part about those matches is that it hasn’t been just one girl scoring all the goals,” she said. “When we beat Cooper 8-0, we had eight girls score. We had girls out there getting the ball to their teammates because they wanted them to score, too.”
But on one special night, Feb. 14, Brown was on fire, scoring all six goals in a 6-5 win over Lubbock Cooper. Nights like that can never be predicted, but sometimes an athlete will get a sense during the competition that they’re doing something special. Brown said she never felt anything like that during the match.
“I just wanted to win, and as we were going back and forth with them, I just kept thinking, ‘we aren’t going to lose this match,’ “ Brown said. “Toward the end of the match, I realized I had the six goals, but I never thought about it when we were battling with them. I’ve never had a night like that. It shocked me as much as anyone else, but it was a great feeling.”
Again, Van Hoose said the six-goal match happened because of team cohesion.
“It wasn’t like Laila had the ball and was just dribbling down the field and around everyone to try and score,” she said. “Everyone on the field was doing their part, and she just happened to be in the right spots to put the ball in the back of the net. You don’t get those opportunities until a selfless team tries to get their teammates in the best positions to feed them the ball.”
And now it’s time to put that shiny 15-2-2 regular season and district title in the rearview mirror and head into the playoffs, a place where the Lady Eagles haven’t been since 2017.
“The thing we’ve talked about this week is that every time we step on the field from here on out, it could be the last game for our seniors,” Van Hoose said. “You play for your team, you play for your seniors, you play for yourself, and you play for your season every time we go on the field. It’ll be awesome, and I’m looking forward to watching them compete. We’ll embrace the moment, but at the end of the day, we want to get a gold ball.”
AHS Boys Also In Playoffs
The Abilene High boys rallied from a 1-5-4 start to finish the regular season at 10-7-5, qualifying for the Class 5A playoffs thanks to a second-place finish in District 4-5A (9-2-1).
The Eagles, under the direction of second-year head coach Roy Castillo, will take on Amarillo High (6-11-3, 4-3-1 and third in District 3-5A) at 7 p.m. March 24 at Frenship High School, giving the Abilene High boys and girls soccer teams a playoff doubleheader. The winner of that bi-district match will move on to the area round to face the winner of this weekend’s contest between El Paso Hanks and El Paso Andress.
Abilene High scored just two goals in their first six matches of the season (0-4-2) and nine goals total in the first 10 matches of the year (1-5-4) but turned their season around once District 4-5A play began. The Eagles’ defense keyed the turnaround as they allowed just nine goals in 12 district matches, pitching five shutouts in those 12 contests and going 4-0-1 in those five matches.
The Eagles were a combined 4-0 against rivals CHS and Abilene Wylie and beat Lubbock Coronado by a combined score of 14-0 (8-0 and 6-0) in two district matchups.
The Eagles are ranked No. 29 in Class 5A, according to the latest UIL Boys State Coaches’ Rankings, as they are back in the playoffs for the first time since 2019.
