When the ball rippled the side netting, John Gilson could finally exhale.
The head coach of the Cardinal Newman High School girl’s soccer team turned from the water cooler, dropped his clipboard on the sideline and rushed to the center of the field with his 18 players where jubilation ensued. Junior Keely Roy’s bending finish had just sealed a dramatic 2-1 overtime victory in the D3 NorCal Championship in Sacramento.
“We had to have been celebrating on the field for 45 minutes,” Gilson recalled over the phone. “And there were still tears."
A few months earlier, the most destructive wildfire in California's history devastated the campus of Cardinal Newman and the homes of six players on the team just weeks before the start of their season.