As the sun sets on the 2016-17 winter girls soccer regular season, the Wesley Chapel High (WCH) Wildcats are looking like a team poised to make a deep playoff run and possibly take home the first girls soccer district title in school history.
It’s thanks in large part to the team’s two high-scoring forwards, senior Bailey Hern and junior Tori Mitchell.
“It’s great to watch,” WCH head coach Michelle Clark says. “They know where the other one is going to be and even when I move them to different positions, they still play off of each other.”
Coming out of Christmas break as the team heads into the Class 3A, District 7 tournament this week as the No. 2 seed, Mitchell now has a team-best 32 goals in 14 games played, and Hern is right behind her with 30 (in 17 games) for the Wildcats, who are 13-3-2, including 10-1-2 in Class 3A, District 7 play.
Mitchell has notched seven hat tricks this season, including four in an 11-day span last month. Hern has four.
Their season totals rank both of them in the top 13 of all goal scorers in Florida’s Class 3A.
While 2016-17 has been the first full year that they’ve played together in high school, their connection dates back to their one season on the same team at Weightman Middle School, when Hern was an eighth-grader and Mitchell was in seventh. They only overlapped one season at Weightman, as Hern attended Stewart MS for her sixth and seventh-grade seasons, but the chemistry was in the air even then.
“It made the game easier for me, having someone like that playing forward with me,” Hern says. “That’s definitely where the chemistry started.”
Yet, it would take a few years before the pairing really started to come to fruition.
Hern played on a struggling 4-13-1 team her freshman year at WCH while Mitchell was still at Weightman.
The duo was reunited for Hern’s sophomore season, but an injury sidelined Mitchell and the two didn’t share the field much. Hern, however, burst onto the prep scene with 30 goals and 18 assists during the 2014-15 season.
“It was hard at first with Tori’s injury,” Clark says. “But, we knew what the future held with these two, one day.”
The knee injury that sidelined Mitchell for much of her freshman season also cut into her sophomore campaign last season as well. She managed to play in 11 of the team’s 14 games in 2015-16, and the pair combined for 41 goals, with Hern scoring 22 and Mitchell tallying 19.
WCH finished as the District 3A-7 runners up, dropping a 2-1 overtime loss to Pasco in the title game.
This season, the tenacious tandem is back together full time and devouring opposing defenses.
What’s more, they are both tallying up assists at a fairly impressive rate, too. Currently, Hern leads the team with 14, and Mitchell has eight.
“We know where the other one likes the ball, and we know where they’re going to run to get the ball,” Hern says.
Even when Hern has to drop back to the midfield, she still knows where Mitchell will be and where she is going.
“Bailey is so versatile, she can drop back and play midfield to help out if we have an injury,” Mitchell said. “I know she’s always looking for me and she really knows how to get me the ball.”
Both readily admit that most of their assists are to each other, but teammates like freshmen Sophia Mitchell (11 goals, six assists) and Sydney Martin (five goals, six assists) and seniors Kelly Vester (nine goals, 11 assists) and Lauren Campoe (three goals, nine assists) have helped make the offense one of the best in the Tampa Bay area.
Last season, the Wildcats scored 83 goals in 21 matches and made the 3A Regional semifinals. This season, they have found the back of the net 103 times in 18 matches, or more than 5.7 goals per game.
“Even if we make mistakes, we are able to come back from them,” Clark says. “Any time (we’ve fallen behind) 1-0 this season, it’s like we’ve come back even stronger.”
With the Mitchell-Hern combo up top, it can be tough for opponents to stay in the game. The Wildcats have won 11 of their 13 wins by at least five goals.
“This year, we have depth that we haven’t had in years past,” Clark says. “The girls that come off the bench this year, play at a higher level than the subs we’ve had in years past.”
Clark and her team hope that this pushes them over the top, namely against District 3A-7 rival Pasco. The Wildcats tied the Pirates earlier in the season and fell 5-3 two weeks later with an injury-plagued squad.
The Pirates, who went 12-0-1 in the district, will be the top seed in the 3A-7 tournament, which begins next week at Weeki Wachee High in Hernando County.
Bulls Prepping For Tough District Tourney
The Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) girls soccer team is 11-7-5 heading into the Class 5A, District 7 tournament this week at Steinbrenner High in Tampa.
The Bulls will play the Warriors (9-2-1) in the first round of the tournament.
They went into the Christmas break on a three-game winning streak, outscoring opponents Fivay, Hudson and Ridgewood by a combined 13-0. Freshman keeper Hanna Taugner post all three shutouts in net. The Bulls enter the 5A-7 tournament winners of seven of their past eight matches.
Junior Rylind Robinson leads the team with 13 goals and five assists, senior Sydney Chase has nine goals, and Kat Llanos has eight goals and nine assists.
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