Double Time: Falcon Girls Soccer Repeats As State Champs

Severna Park’s girls soccer season was a lot of knowing exactly what they needed: long stretches of settling into the game, and then seizing the moment at the right time to chalk up another win and keep the season rolling along.

On the final night of their season, under the bright lights at Loyola University and on the big stage of the state championship game on November 14, the Falcons knew it was time to flip the script.

Two goals in the game’s first 10 minutes gave Severna Park one proverbial hand on the championship trophy, and the defending champs were never going to let it slip away as they delivered a dominant performance to defeat Towson 4-0 and repeat as the queens of Maryland 3A soccer.

Erin Hussey scored seven minutes in and Abby Cover netted from the penalty spot two minutes later to send the Falcons on their way. Maria Bragg added two second-half goals to provide the final margin as Severna Park won the state championship for the eighth time in program history.

Towson started out more brightly, looking to attack from the opening kick. But Cover, whose overtime goal won the semifinal matchup against Chesapeake, intercepted a pass on the Severna Park 18-yard line, played a quick one-two and found Hussey streaking into wide open space in on the keeper, and the forward made no mistake with her shot.

“From the start of the game in our huddle, we said let’s get one right from the start, get one really early just to set the tone,” Hussey said. “They were on our defensive side for a while, Abby got the ball, and I screamed (for the ball). I saw the open goal, I saw two girls crashing, and I had to just shoot it.”

Moments later, Ava Scott — scorer of Severna Park’s second goal in the 2023 championship — was tripped in the Towson penalty area and the referee pointed to the spot.

Cover casually rolled the ball into the bottom-right corner to double the lead and put the Falcons in control, even if they didn’t act like it.

“We had the momentum, but we just kept saying, 0-0,” Cover said. “We can’t think we have the momentum, because the game can change at any moment if they put one in.”

That 0-0 mentality came from a lot of games where the contest remained scoreless for lengthy periods of time, only for one of the Falcons to pop up in the big moment. Hussey scored against J.M. Bennett in the regional final game, only for the Falcons to be pegged back and the game to go to overtime. Hussey netted again to propel Severna Park into the state quarterfinals.

After a tense, yet comparatively comfortable game against Bel Air in the quarters, which they won 3-1, Severna Park found themselves against a too familiar foe: Chesapeake, who the Falcons had twice beaten 2-0 earlier in the season.

The semifinal would go to overtime scoreless, but an instinctive adjustment by Cover, Severna Park’s best player, bound for NCAA Division I North Carolina-Greensboro next fall, made the telling difference. Acting as one of half of Severna Park’s double-pivot defensive midfield, Cover asked the other, Bella Van Gieson, to expect to go further forward.

“I told Bella, ‘I think I need to push up a little bit,’ and asked her to slide over and cover when I go forward,” Cover said.

Less than six minutes later, the instinct proved prophetic. A cross-field pass put Cover into space, which she happily took. She laid the ball off for Scott and kept running into the penalty area, anticipating the return pass that soon came.

With the defense closing and her shooting angle growing tighter, Cover let fly with a dipping shot that bounced past the diving Chesapeake goalkeeper and rippled the net just inside the far post for the game’s only goal.

For all of the plaudits of the 2023 Severna Park team, the 2024 squad made their own stamp on the program’s history. Just three goals beat Severna Park in 2023, and despite retooling the entire defense, goalkeeper Lily Diedrich only had to pick the ball out of her own net six times in 19 games. They didn’t go undefeated — a narrow loss to Notre Dame Prep is their only blemish in the last two seasons — and they had to work harder for goals in certain contests. But this team had composure, experience, and the will to keep up the standard.

“We graduated 12 but we had a really strong core coming back, especially at the attacking end of the field, so the gaps we had to plug, I was really excited with the players not only returning, but the ones that were coming into the program,” said Severna Park coach Rick Stimpson. “They made it a seamless transition; they stepped in and carried on right where we left off last year. That made it fun for us just being out there every day.”

That transition was aided in large part by talented attack returning: twin sisters Ava and Emerson Scott helped drive the attack, even if they didn’t score regularly; Maria Bragg demonstrated soccer ability and superior athleticism on her way to a team-high 13 goals, two of them in the championship game; Hussey scored in double figures and plenty of timely ones at that; Ella Baxter came in and netted nine times.

But a lot came back to the senior midfield duo of Cover and Van Gieson, who truly made the whole thing go.

“You’d hope to have one on your team at some point during your career, and I’ve got two of them right now that just impact the game from start to finish,” Stimpson said. “The way they read the game is amazing. They make everyone around them so much better, and they fill in the gaps. … That’s not anything I’ve said to them. They’re just very instinctive players. They know the game well. Good players impact the game, great players make everyone around them better, and that’s what those two are.”

Last year at this time, the Falcons said goodbye to a dozen seniors. This year, they'll bid farewell to just five: Diedrich, Hussey, Van Gieson, Cover and Ellie Ballard. Those pieces, as were the ones from 2023, will prove a challenge to replace. But they left their mark on the Falcons soccer program and hope to have left more than two titles as a legacy.

“You know the state final could be there, but it’s on the table for any team. To get there, you have to play one game at a time and not get too far ahead of yourself,” Hussey said.

Said Cover: “They should value the experience. Four years flies by and it’s an amazing experience. You don’t want to take every second for granted. Just play every game with your heart out. If you just keep playing for your team and yourselves every single game, you’ll go far.”