North girls down Mariner to earn regional soccer title

Feb 22, 2024 By CJ HADDAD 3 min read

The North Fort Myers Red Knights girls soccer team toppled the top seed on the road Wednesday night, capturing the FHSAA 5A-3 Regional Championship and punching its ticket to the State Final Four.

The Red Knights (17-3) snuck out a 1-0 win over rival and No. 1 seed in the class, Mariner (20-4), taking down a squad that had come out on top in two prior meetings this year, including the 5A-11 District Championship.

North now heads to the Final Four for the first time since the 2020-21 season.

“It’s awesome. It’s just super happy for the girls,” said Red Knights head coach Nick Erickson. “Based on the way we had played in the district final, to be honest, I didn’t know if we’d get back to this game.

“We had a little self-meeting as a team after that, and asked ‘What do we really want from the rest of the season?’

“I think they took that to heart, and had great leadership from Evie (McCarthy), Sophia (Kerns), Cami (Nunn) and Gigi (Gerke). These seniors want to play. And they came to play. They really were the aggressors yesterday and it showed.”

A terrible arm injury to a standout defender in Nunn just shy of 40 minutes into a scoreless contest could have proved costly for the Red Knights, but they gathered and put the pressure on Mariner — pressure that paid off.

“It was go time at that point,” Erickson said. “Cami is one of the toughest kids I’ve ever been around, and I told them you know exactly what she’d be saying — she’d say ‘Go play the game.'”

Coming out of the half, Erickson said the feeling and effort on the field was possibly the most “electrifying” he’d witnessed in his 11 years coaching.

It was Red Knights’ leading scorer Kerns that netted the decisive goal in the 59th minute. Kerns is playing great soccer at this point especially in the season, having come up with crucial goals for the Red Knights throughout the tournament.

“It’s just great to see her playing her absolute best soccer at North in these final games as a senior,” Erickson said. “She just doesn’t realize how talented of a player she actually is.

“She knows how she wanted to leave her mark, and she’s not going down without anything but her best.”

North will head to Deland to play at SpecMartin Stadium ranked as the No. 2 seed, where the Red Knights will take on No. 3 ranked Lincoln (Tallahassee, 16-5-1). The State Semifinal match takes place Tuesday, Feb. 27, at 10 a.m. If North advances to the State Championship, the title game will take place Friday, March 1, at 4 p.m.

“If we bring the effort that we’ve brought throughout these three regional games, we can play with anybody in the state,” Erickson said. “Mariner was ranked number one and gunning for them. And if we can play like that against the number one team in the state, then why can’t we win the next two games? That’s the way we look at it. We’re not going up there to lose.”

To reach CJ HADDAD, please email cjhaddad@breezenewspapers.com