Soccer Team Faces Mixed Results at Francisco Hope Tournament
- Maura Cunningham
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Every year, the SWW soccer teams attend the Francisco Hope Tournament at the beginning of the season. Four teams, from four schools, meet at St. Andrews High School campus to compete for DMV glory.
The girl’s team started their tournament off with a game against Holy Cross. The game ended 2-2 in regular time. In penalties, Walls slotted in all five, while Holy Cross missed one, leading to the win.
Simone Meltzer (‘27) said, “I am happy with the first game’s outcome, I thought we fought hard.” The next day, Walls faced St. Andrews, and were met with a 4-1 loss. Fiona Leavitt (‘29) spoke about the environment in the team. “Everyone’s really, really nice. Especially the upperclassmen, they do their best to include everyone and all that.” She went on to say, “Everyone does their best to, even if they don’t know you, at least be nice.”
The boy’s team started their tournament with a game against St. Andrews. Walls scored early, and kept their lead for the first half. Then, in the second half, St. Andrews scored from a free kick to even it up. This game also went to penalties, and despite heroics from the Walls keeper, the shootout ended in a 4-3 loss.
“Even though we didn’t get the result we wanted, we put up a great fight and competed very well,” captain Pablo Marin-Hormigo (‘26) said about the game, “We played our hearts out, really just got unlucky with the result.”
On Saturday, Walls faced German International to fight for third place, and the Penguins came away with a dominant 6-1 win. When asked about the win, freshman Matthias Sgherri Cipollone (‘29) noted the, “Good defense and offense on our end.”
In regards to the overall performance of the team, Sgherri Cipollone said, “I feel like it was an overall good season opener for the team. It was a way to build chemistry together on and off the pitch.”
Compared to last year’s tournament, Marin-Hormigo said, “Attitude and performance was better I would say, even though last year we played the final. We had the harder route this year but we gave it a harder fight against St. Andrews this year than last year.”
Sgherri Cipollone spoke in depth about the profoundly positive environment created by the older players on the team, “The environment that the upperclassmen set for everyone is so inspirational, brotherly, and just amazing. For me personally, they welcomed me and made me feel like part of the team from day one.”
Going into the regular season, both teams have expressed that they have room to grow from the tournament. According to Meltzer, “I think moving forward the team can try and keep momentum going through the whole game because sometimes towards the end we can lose energy and play messier.”
Leavitt added, “We definitely need to work on getting the ball into the back of the net, because we can usually out-perform teams, but sometimes we struggle to actually get goals.” she notes however that, “It’s only gonna get better from here, definitely. Cause, we only played a couple games together and our chemistry is getting better. And, also, we have a lot of really good people–even though we do keep getting injured–we have a lot of really good players and I think we’re gonna do really really well this season."
For the boy’s team, Marin-Hormigo said, “We need to practice shooting at practice a little more so when we have chances like we did against (St. Andrews) we finish and get the job done.” Overall, both teams concluded the St. Andrews tournament with competitive performances and identified areas for growth as they entered the regular season.
