ORANGE PARK – St. Johns Country Day School girls soccer fans probably already had hotel rooms reserved near Stetson University as the Spartan soccer train rolled to a 6-0 state semifinal win over Evangelical Christian of Fort Myers Friday night at St. Johns Country Day School.

“I noticed they weren’t super-aggressive in the air which is weird because they are a physical team,” said St. Johns coach Mike Pickett, who noted six yellow cards and two red cards in last year’s 5-0 win. “They were physical tonight; last year it was ridicules.”

The win jets the Spartans (24-0-0) into the Class 1A championship game a seventh consecutive year, this year to face Miami Country Day School (19-3-2), who upset perennial power Lakeland Christian (22-1-2) in the opposite state semifinal. The Lakeland Christian loss was their first of the season.

From the opening kickoff, the St Johns Lady Spartan soccer team wasted no time getting after the Fort Myers Evangelical Christian Sentinels. The Spartans only needed just over 11 minutes to find the flaws in Evangelical’s defense, expose it and take full advantage. What surprised everyone was how fast the scoring piled up once it started.

After five shots on goal, with 28:22 left in the first, Abbey Newton took a feed off a corner kick to blast goal one passed the Sentinel’s keeper. During that first 11 plus minutes, it was just finding the weak spots and exploiting them.

“We do that a lot.” said Pickett. “We hit our groove. The seams were there and offensively we worked yesterday watching the game film on them. We knew they had huge gaps in their back line and they were not a great marking team.”

With 26:54 left, Kamy Loustau dropped in behind her defender, took a header that went over the defended and found herself one-on-one with the keeper. As the keeper tried to come out and take the angle away, Loustau made one quick move, beat the keeper off her right side and had score number two up on the board. Just 23 seconds later at 26:31, Loustau took another drop pass, beat her defender and nailed goal number three. Not even at the water break, the Sentinels were looking at what could be a typical final score of 3-0.

At 16:00, the Sentinels drew their first Yellow Card, proving the anticipated physical play Coach Pickett expected. Off a free kick at 14:27 left in the first half, the ball was placed with precision to Payton Crews who headed the ball right past the Sentinel keeper to score goal number four. To this point, Fort Myers still has not even had a shot on goal as St. Johns defense never allowed the Sentinels ball control anywhere near the box. With 3:22 left until half, off a corner throw in, Kamy Loustau got the hat trick on the night with her third goal to put St. Johns up 5-0. The fifth goal would be the last for the half as both teams took a break to reconfigure. Fort Myers, to try and stop the bleeding, and St. Johns to figure who would go in the game to start the second half and gain some experience.

At the beginning of the second half, the Spartans went with just about all non-starters to include their back-up keeper.

“You know its 5-0 and your thought as a coach is we can just end it, and I may get some of my kids kicked and its 5-0 and you sit there and say why do I have them in there if it’s 5-0?” said Pickett. “ I didn’t keep my starters in there to beat them 8-0. I let my young kids play and my young kids did great; they did an awesome job. These are the kids for next year, so they’re going to have to step in there.”

St. Johns will travel to Deland Wednesday at 7 pm to face off against a new opponent this year in Miami Country Day School as they won in overtime against Lakeland Christian. St. Johns played Lakeland Christian seven times. “Miami Country Day has a national team kid in Amanda Martin who is a stud. She will give anyone a hard time. I’d love to play Miami Country Day, a team that has never seen us.”