Sunrise Fire impressive at Atlanta Cup

9/4/2007

Sunrise Fire U15 girls left Friday for Atlanta missing two key starters due to injuries and Head Coach Gus Camacho, who had to remain home for personal reasons. They returned Monday evening as Tournament Champions U15 Division “A” Atlanta Cup.

This group could have went to Atlanta, had some fun, not worked hard and returned with tons of excuses why they didn’t win, but instead they dug into their hearts and left everything on the field to win their first ever Atlanta Cup Title.

Sunrise started off playing Cobb Strikers (GA) to a 5-1 victory, followed later that day with a 7-2 victory over North Meck Storm (NC). As the games got harder and the girls got more bruised they continued to play hard earning a 2-0 victory over Cannons 93 Gold (GA). This set up a semi-final match with Lady Chiefs 93 Gold (GA). Sunrise won this hard match 2-1 setting up a Finals re-match with Roswell Santos Blue (teams met in Vulcan Cup Finals last March).

First half started slowly for Sunrise as the Roswell team came out hard and fast. The Sunrise defense bent a little but never broke, as the team seemed to play on their heels the first 35 minutes, taking a 0-0 score into halftime. Sunrise was challenged to dig deeper going into the second half and they came out swinging, scoring 3 unanswered goals to seal the first Atlanta Cup title for this team 3-0.

Nine different girls scored goals during this weekend. Dominating defense lead by Kaitlyn Manning, Erica Wilner, Anastasia Mesa and Tyler Rosemellia, paved the way to this victory as well as outstanding goal keeping by Rebecca Rogers.