HUNTSVILLE – A tenacious young Lady Toro team fought hard to win the 5A girls state championship at John Hunt Park Saturday.

The upstart girls made their first-ever final four soccer appearance for SFHS – a school and a program still younger than its youngest players — but were never intimidated by the No. 1 ranked Briarwood Christian Lady Lions (15-6-1) who won their eighth state title 4-2.

SFHS head coach Barclay Kercher was proud and impressed by her team. "For our first appearance here I thought we handled the pressure well." she said. "I'm really proud of how we kept the pressure up right to the end. Briarwood Christian has phenomenal speed, we made some adjustments and I think we played hard and played a good match. It is a runner up, but I'm very pleased with our first performance here."

Briarwood's Abbie Cutcliffe broke a scoreless halftime tie 24 seconds into the second half on a PK but the Toros tied it on Elissa VandeWaa's header goal off a corner kick by Rebekah Diring.

Tournament MVP Sara Smeltzer scored twice to help the Lions regain the lead which grew to 4-1 before Alicia Linder hit another goal with an assist from Diring for Spanish Fort. SF ended its season at 18-6. SFHS had several quality opportunities that went down as near misses.

On Friday the Lady Toros defeated Arab's Lady Knights 1-0 to advance to the championship match Saturday. Jessica Watts scored off an assist from VandeWaa who funneled a cross from Linder to set up the match-winning goal for SF two minutes in. Freshman keeper Johannah Scott had three saves in that shutout match against the Lady Knights and five in the first half against the top-ranked Lady Lions whose last title was 2007, but who have made it to the final four each year since.

In the second half of the championship the Lady Lions began flooding the box. The go-ahead PK was point blank, but the next three scoring shots were from even closer range. Still, Scott made two more saves down the stretch.

"Jo did a great job back there. We just got outnumbered back there," Kercher said. "We answered back after the PK with the header by Elissa and answered back later with the goal Alicia Linder scored and we never gave up."

Kercher has most of her players returning and hopes to build on the success of 2010. "We graduate two seniors so I don't feel like this will be our last trip for sure."

BC advanced to the finals with a shutout win over Athens Bible in the semifinals.