
Photo by Erin Nelson.
Vestavia Hills head coach Brigid Meadow looks on as time runs down on the clock in the first halfof a game between Vestavia Hills and OakMountain on March 12. The no. 2 Eagles defeated the no. 1 Rebels 4-0, for Vestavia’sfirst loss of the season.
The 2020 season ended on a sour note for the Vestavia Hills High School girls soccer team.
But the pain was doubled for the Rebels. Not only did they lose a shot at defending their 2019 state championship, but they lost to rival Oak Mountain on the final game before the season was abruptly cut short.
After a 14-0 start to the season, Vestavia Hills could not have ended the year with a less desirable result. In a highly anticipated matchup against rival Oak Mountain, the Rebels dropped a 4-0 decision. All four of Oak Mountain’s goals in the game came from set pieces, the most goals Vestavia Hills had surrendered in a single contest since 2015.
“We had a really bad game,” Vestavia Hills head coach Brigid Meadow said.
That matchup was March 12 and would be the final game of the season before the COVID-19 pandemic began to sweep the nation and alter school schedules. Originally, Meadow hoped the team would get an opportunity to continue playing and redeem itself.
“I told the girls that we’ve got to stay fit, be ready to come back and compete,” Meadow said. “Don’t let your fitness level drop, because that’s one of the things we really work on.”
During that two-week limbo period before the season was permanently canceled March 26, Meadow couldn’t shake a thought.
“We need to get back and play because I know we can win state,” she recalled thinking.
The loss to Oak Mountain snapped Vestavia Hills’ 43-game winning streak. The Rebels capped the 2018 season with six straight victories and a state crown, went a perfect 23-0 in 2019 to win a second consecutive title and won their first 14 matchups this season.
The premature ending of the campaign also meant the end of the careers of Vestavia seniors Izzy Passman (who missed the season with a knee injury), Katie Milldrum, Queenie Samaha, Victoria Rohner and Arden Young.
“I wish we had more time to get back on the field, play again and not end the season in that manner,” Meadow said. “I felt bad for every single senior out there. You work your entire life to play and you’re in a supporting role for most of those years. And your senior year, you don’t get to star.”
The Oak Mountain game was certainly an outlier and not necessarily a reflection of how Vestavia’s typically stout defensive back line played. That back line helped the Rebels win a state title as sophomores and racked up 10 clean sheets in 15 games this spring.
Meadow believes that group, along with the entire 2021 class, will be back with a vengeance next season.
“This junior class, they’ve been with me for so long and started for so long,” Meadow said. “They’re going to put forth everything they have because they want to come out on top. They want to win.”
The way the bracket set up, Vestavia Hills and Oak Mountain would have matched up in the Class 7A finals. Meadow feels strongly that both teams would have advanced that far, given how strong they were in the first month of the season.
While there is hardware to prove how good the Rebels were in 2020, Meadow believes the players and coaches still have plenty to takeaway from the year.
“They have lifelong friends, they have the games that they played and they have their memories. Hopefully they have good memories of the things they’ve done in the past,” she said.