A Remarkable Run of Success that Started over Two Decades Ago is Kept Alive by Successive Generations of Lady Wolverine Soccer Players
By: Garrett Mitchell, Staff Writer
None of the six seniors on Woodruff’s girls’ soccer were born before 2003. Nonetheless, those six and their teammates helped carry on one of South Carolina prep sports’ most remarkable runs of success that began even before they entered the world.
The Lady Wolverines have sat atop their region at season’s end for two decades. The canceled 2020 season due to a pandemic notwithstanding, nobody has been able to unseat Woodruff in over two decades.
Woodruff has been a part of 10 different region alignments, two classifications and has competed against countless different conference foes during that time, and still, nobody has dethroned the perpetual champions.
The Lady Wolverines all call themselves a family. It has always been that way. To them, winning is simply a family tradition passed down to each new generation of players.
For the players on the 2022 team, success on the field is simply something they were born into.
“It’s absolutely crazy to think about,” said senior striker Emily Brown, a four-year varsity player. “I am so honored to be able to carry the legacy of those girls who first started this run, and it’s just amazing that I get to be here and celebrate that with my team.”
The 2022 Lady Wolverines had to fight and claw more than most to keep the streak alive. An early region overtime defeat at the hands of an emerging Clinton team put Woodruff behind the eight-ball. And as the Lady Red Devils kept winning, it was apparent that the Lady Wolverines would need to run the table and beat their rivals outright the second time around.
“It was a lot of fun,” said sweeper Samantha Garrett, another four-year varsity senior. “It does help that our coaches were always there for us and our teammates just being the great teammates that they are. We knew we would come out with a win.”
Woodruff went on a tear following that narrow defeat and plowed through the remaining portion of their conference slate largely unchallenged. However, less than a week before the looming rematch with Clinton, a tight game against the Chapman Panthers turned into one of the season’s defining moments.
The Lady Wolverines battled to a 1-1 deadlock through regulation and two overtime periods. Woodruff had already beaten the Panthers on penalty kicks in the first meeting. A loss would put the team two games back of Clinton and make the Red Devils impossible to catch. But a late goal in the second overtime period proved decisive as the Lady Wolverines claimed a 2-1 victory.
The rematch was on, and this time, the game would be played in Woodruff.
“These were (Coach Emaleigh Beeler’s) exact words,” explained senior center mid Coco Zheng when recalling the win at Chapman. “She said, ‘In this time, it’s all about who wants it more.’ We were really hungry and wanted it and knew how much pressure was on us. Twenty years is a long time, so we wanted to maintain the streak. We wanted it more.”
The second game against the Red Devils was again a nail-biting affair. The game was tied into the second half, but a late Woodruff goal would stand up this time, and the Lady Wolverines came out on top 2-1.
Then came the region championship tiebreaker.
With both teams sporting a 9-1 region record, with each other’s loss coming against the other, a one-game tilt was played at the neutral site of Union County High School to crown a conference champion once and for all. This time, Woodruff left little doubt about who still owned Region III-3A.
The Lady Wolverines broke open a scoreless game at the half with two goals in the second and never allowed the Clinton offense to shake loose. Woodruff won the game 2-0 and their 20th consecutive region championship with it.
The family tradition was alive and well.
“We had one goal,” continued Zheng. “One common goal, and that’s what we had been training for the entire season, and we wanted to continue it. We wanted to show respect to our coaches and respect to ourselves. (The tiebreaker game) was the climax, and everything else to get there was the rising action. The energy was just immaculate.”
Coach Beeler, herself a 2015 Woodruff graduate and star on the girls’ soccer team, has now experienced winning as a player and a coach. The pride she has in her players is immense, and she explained how happy she was that the streak she helped carry on as a player continued to live through the ladies she coaches now.
“I was very overwhelmed at first,” said the first-year head coach. “I guess because when I did play here for Coach Fernando (Gomez), I felt that pressure as a player. You want to keep the legend going. When I started coaching, and we lost our first game to Clinton, I was nervous. I was like, gosh, this is going to come back on me. What I had to tell myself is, it’s all about the players. I can’t make them want it as much as I did back then. But what I can do is influence and push them as much as I wanted it back then.”
Beeler continued, “This team has a lot of character and a lot of resilience. Our six seniors have been fabulous leaders. I could not have asked for a better group of seniors for my first year of coaching. They are the ones at halftime when I had no words to motivate the team; they were the ones who came up with the words. They know the girls way better than I will ever know them and have a different relationship. They were able to light that fire under them and keep them going.”
Woodruff played one of the most robust schedules in the state during the regular season. Their out-of-conference competition included a slate of 5A opponents among the state’s best and defending 3A state champion Powdersville. That early-season grind did nothing but strengthen the toughness and resolve of the Lady Wolverines.
“We always felt we could beat anyone,” Garrett said.
Author: Tracy Sanders
