Owensboro and Apollo celebrated their 30th year anniversary of their girls’ soccer programs. Apollo held a celebration that recognized members of the inaugural team in August. Both the Lady Red Devils and the E-gals have had 30 years of players and coaches alike leave their marks on the programs, but it’s important to take a look back at the inaugural teams that got the ball rolling.
In 1993, Owensboro created the girls’ varsity soccer team due to the high petitioning of the female players who played on the boys’ team and their parents to create a separate girl’s team. Sarah Loucks was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the team. Loucks said her friends expressed their interest in playing soccer alongside her as Loucks herself played for the Owensboro Youth Soccer Association and for the OHS boys’ junior varsity team.
“I had a bunch of my female friends tell me they wished they could play soccer too, but were bummed because we didn’t have a girl’s team,” she said. “Once I realized we had enough girls with interest, I just asked Mr. VanWinkle. I remember it was before the first bell one morning near the end of my sophomore year, and Mr. V was in the hall, so I just walked up, looked up at him and said, ‘Can we have a girl’s soccer team next year?’ He stared back down at me and said, ‘yes.’ I remember that entire exchange, Mr. (David) Johnson and Mr. (Tom) Purcell were right there and they both looked at me, then at Mr V – and that was that. We had a girl’s team.”
Then senior Emily Ahnell, who would go on to be the team’s leading scorer that year with 12 goals, was another such player who was excited for the creation of the new team. Ahnell played on the boys’ team prior. She said the physical differences between the female and male athletes began to grow too much for her to keep up, so she was excited when Owensboro created the girls’ team.
“I tried to play on the OHS boys’ team soccer team for a couple of years, but it became too much as the boys were just bigger and faster,” she said. “Then, in my senior year, OHS started varsity soccer for the girls. I was so excited to play soccer, my passion, for my high school.”
Christy Chaney was also a senior on the team that year, and she experienced the same difficulties playing on the boys’ team alongside Ahnell and Loucks, she said. The creation of the girls’ team helped female players like them thrive in a setting where they competed against other women.
“The only way to continue playing soccer once we aged out of the youth program was to play on the boys team. Emily, Sarah and I played our hearts out but it was physically impossible to compete on the same level as the men and therefore it kept us on the bench more than we would have liked.”
“Mr. VanWinkle, the principal at the time, really listened to us and our parents. He believed in women’s sports and helped make it happen. It not only gave us a place to really shine and be successful on our own level, but there was a safety factor involved in women playing sports and traveling with other women.”
The first team of coaches was led by Michael Stinnett and Steve Bratcher. Stinnett, who is now head coach of boys’ basketball at Beth Haven Christian in Louisville, was the assistant boys basketball coach for Owensboro, and had no prior experience with soccer. He was asked to coach the team alongside Bratcher and handle a lot of the paperwork, he said.
“I was asked to coach the team and handle a lot of the paperwork for the experience of it,” he said. “I really enjoyed it. It was a great experience and we had some very good girls to work with and ended up having a very successful season. Coach Steve Bratcher was the co-head coach and was the soccer guy. He had a lot of experience with soccer and handled most of the practices and game preparation. I did my best to motivate and encourage the girls. We had a special group of kids and parents, and they represented OHS in a very good fashion on and off the field. It was a great experience for me.”
Bratcher was fresh out of college and played soccer in high school, so Owensboro appointed him to coach the team with Stinnett. About 21 girls from varying ages and grade levels signed up to play for the newly formed team. All skill levels were invited to join the team as well. There were girls who had played on the boys’ teams and there were those who had never played soccer before. Having played for years at the club level prior to the inaugural OHS team, Ahnell said the varying skill levels of the team was something that they had to work around, she said.
“It was an interesting experience in that there were some females who had played soccer and then there were some that were new to the game and inexperienced,” she said. “It was tough trying to balance the experienced with the inexperienced.”
With his soccer experience, Bratcher led practices and got the girls to play against other girls’ teams in the area. This was not easy starting out, as Bratcher said they didn’t have an actual field to practice on nor did they have a big variety of teams outside of Owensboro to play against.
“Daviess County I think had a team, but that was it,” he said. “At that time there were not many teams around here except Louisville and Lexington that had a girls’ soccer team. It’s much like how lacrosse has taken off now with there being pods of teams playing. We actually had played several teams from the Paducah area that first year. That was our district because we had to chat with Paducah to play in the district tournament.”
“That first year was interesting because we didn’t have a practice field. We practiced behind
Foust Elementary on makeshift goals. That’s kinda how we started. We played our games where the boys played theirs over at the middle school. It was quite a year, but we got it started and it took off.”
Despite those hurdles, Loucks, Chaney and Ahnell remember the season being fun, competitive and full of lessons of patience, leadership and teamwork.
“It was so much fun,” Loucks said. “We were competitive, but I remember just having fun together on and off the field. And I do feel like we all knew it was cool to be the first team, especially for Senior High. We were still a pretty big sport’s school.”
Owensboro finished that season with a record of 7-7. They won the City-County Championship after beating Daviess County 2-0. They even made an appearance in the semifinals of the regional tournament by defeating Paducah Tilghman and Calloway County before being eliminated by Henderson County.
Both Loucks and Ahnell went on to play soccer in college. Ahnell signed to play soccer at Alabama and Loucks went on to play club soccer at the University of Tennessee and West Virginia University. Looking back, Ahnell was proud to be a part of the Owensboro girls’ soccer legacy and that she is glad the program is thriving today. Loucks was just happy to get to play with her friends and represent OHS.
“It wasn’t about me then or now,” she said. “I think it was inevitable that we would have a girls team, but it was mostly because I had so many friends who wanted to play – and we got to play together! And for our school! School sports were a big deal when I was there and we loved being a part of that – not necessarily the first team, although very cool, but just that we had a team.”
Looking back, Chaney is grateful to those who supported the girls in creating the team. The one small decision to say yes has left a legacy of sports and life lessons that she plans to pass down to her own daughters, she said.
“Emily and I were seniors the first year of the team, it was an incredible moment in time to be a part of and then walk away leaving a legacy that still thrives 30 years later,” she said. “It’s amazing to know what can happen when you ask for equality and the people in charge listen and respond in a way that changes the course of history even for something that seems as small as women’s soccer in Owensboro. We were heard and valued, and that’s a life lesson I carry to this day as I raise my own daughters to make sure they are heard and valued.”
Apollo’s girls’ soccer program had similar beginnings as the team was made as a response to the creation of Owensboro’s team. Like Loucks and Ahnell, Katy Harrison played on Apollo’s boy’s junior varsity while she was in the eighth grade. As a freshman, she was the sole girl who tried out for the boys’ team, but was discouraged after the first practice, she said.
“It was not fun,” she said. “It was kind of that first time that I really noticed a difference in the way the boys performed compared to how I performed. They were stronger and had more stamina. It was that day I had the moment where I told myself, ‘I love this sport, but I can’t do this anymore.’ That night I remember going home, and that realization smacked me in the face. It wasn’t just a physical thing, at that point it was emotional. ”
Harrison talked to her parents that night distraught as she had always played with the boys since she was in the second grade. They asked her what she wanted to do, and she had heard that Owensboro was making an all-girls’ team, so she responded that she wanted to start an all-girls’ team for Apollo as well. Her only other option was to just not play, but that wasn’t on the table, she said.
Harrison and her parents started a petition to get the team created, and Harrison went to work recruiting. She called around and asked girls around the area if they had any interest in playing for Apollo. Despite some girls not having played soccer before, Harrison said she gathered enough people to feel confident in taking it up with the school board. They agreed, but there wasn’t a coach or a schedule.
Kelly Skeens was already coaching the swim team and was an assistant coach for the softball team, but she jumped at the opportunity to coach the girls’ soccer team when the announcement was made at the annual coaches meeting, she said.
“An announcement was made at the annual coaches meeting that we (Apollo) were starting a girls soccer team and they needed a soccer coach,” she said. “I was already coaching the swim team and was an assistant softball coach, but I volunteered to coach because I wanted to support the girls and parents who took the initiative to get a team started. I told Coach McClure, who was the athletic director at the time, that I would coach the team, but he would need to find an assistant who knew all the technical aspects of the game because I had only played goalkeeper on an intramural team in college.”
“Practices should have started several weeks before a team was even put together so we were really behind. Everything happened so fast. We had to order uniforms and equipment and get a place to practice. We had a couple of parents who were integral in helping get everything off the ground that year.”
The team consisted of 25 girls of varying experience and skill levels. Laurel Murphy joined the team with no prior experience, like other girls, solely because she wanted to give soccer a try. At the time, Murphy was already on the softball and basketball teams. She learned the rules of the game along with adding the soccer team to her list of “firsts” with Apollo, which included playing on the first basketball team to win a game in the state tournament and winning the first and only state title in softball.
“It was very special,” she said. “I was fortunate to be a part of several ‘firsts’ at Apollo, and being a part of the first soccer team as a sophomore started it off.”
Despite most of the team not having played before, the team earned four wins in their first season and had an overall record of 4-8-1. Due to her other coaching duties for the swimming and softball teams, Skeens only served as head coach for that first year. Skeens said that looking back she is thankful for the experience and was amazed at how much they improved and what they were able to accomplish. She remembers a specific time of joy after the team had won their first away game.
“I remember us improving skillwise and improving working as a team each game,” she said. “The girls were so determined to be a good team. I remember playing an away game, I think it was our first game and we won. I remember us all going crazy with excitement after the game. I joked with the others that it felt like we had won the World Cup. I was doused with water after the game. It’s one of those moments in your life that you always remember. I’m so appreciative of the entire experience and working with such an awesome group of girls who were so competitive and dedicated! Looking back, it’s really amazing what they did and accomplished that first year.”
As for Harrison, she said that the sport of soccer has been with her throughout her life, and the memory of playing for and helping get the inaugural team started is a part of the legacy that the sport has left in her life.
“When I look back on it, it’s definitely a proud moment,” she said. “I loved the sport, and I still love the sport. It’s been a part of my life repeatedly. I’ve coached the soccer teams at Owensboro middle school and Owensboro high school. I also have a son that plays now, so it just keeps reappearing in my life. I think that is a legacy in itself as well that even though I don’t play anymore, I am still really connected to the sport.”
