Exclamation Point: Point Boro Girls Soccer Wins First State Title

SOMERSET — The history of the Point Pleasant Boro girls soccer team is steeped in excellence, but for as impressive as that résumé is, there was a glaring piece missing from it prior to Saturday night.

The Panthers ventured to Franklin High School for the NJSIAA Group II championship game against Madison and turned in a performance that cemented the 2024 team’s status as the most accomplished in the history of the program.

Junior Elise Viggiano provided a first-half goal before seniors Abby Hanemann and Gabby Mellett added second-half scores to spark Point Boro to a 3-1 win over Madison that clinches the school its first overall state championship in girls soccer.

“This is literally so amazing,” Hanemann said. “This is history. Our goal was winning sectionals, but once we won sectionals, we said, ‘What now? Let’s win the whole thing.’

“We have had great players come through this program: Christie Pearce, Kelsey Haycook. Great players, and the fact that we were able to bring ourselves together and win this is a great feeling.”

“I have an idea, coaching-wise, of how I like to play and the way I want to see things,” Point Boro coach Mike Edolo said. “I saw it perfectly, if not better than I could have imagined from this group this year and here tonight. I’m proud of them.”

The program that produced Christie Rampone — a U.S. Soccer legend and likely the best girls soccer player in Shore Conference history during her days at Point Boro as Christie Pearce — and won Shore Conference Tournament championships in 1987 and 1990 never could break through in the NJSIAA Tournament.

“There have been some great goal-scorers and incredibly successful players that came through,” Edolo said. “To get a state championship in any sport is so incredibly difficult. To be a small school, not a lot of enrollment, not a deep player pool, you’ve just got to build relationships and keep those connections going year after year. Eventually, it just blooms, and it has bloomed beautifully here.”

The Shore Conference girls soccer teams did not participate in the state tournament until the mid-1990s because it was a fall sport for the state while the Shore Conference kept it during the spring. Once the Shore finally made the conversion, Point Boro’s glory years were over.

This group of Point Boro seniors have brought the glory years back and finally collected the trophy that eluded the Panthers program for so long. In the first half, Viggiano got her team on the board with a volley that she dipped under the crossbar and into the goal 15 minutes into the match. Freshman Maddie Renna flicked a throw-in from Hanemann with her head, setting up Viggiano for a one-time volley from 15 yards out.

Hanemann again set up a goal in the 11th minute of the second half. She served a corner kick from the left corner to the far right post, where Mellett — who pushed up from her center back spot — won position and hammered a header into the right corner of the goal for a 2-0 lead.

Group 2 state final: Point Boro takes a 2-0 lead on a header by Gabby Mellett off a corner from Abigail Hanemann in the 51st minute. pic.twitter.com/9jSZpKNqkX

— Matt Manley (@Matt_Manley) November 23, 2024

A two-goal lead would have been enough to win all but one game this year for Point Boro, which conceded more than one goal just one time: a penalty-kicks win over Wall after a 2-2 draw in the Central Jersey Group II final. Madison put that stat to the test in the 53rd, when the Dodgers cut their deficit in half on a goal by junior Camryn Visich.

Point Boro’s defense clamped down after allowing the goal, and in the 67th, the Panthers put the game away on the other end. Hanemann — who led the Shore Conference with 27 assists this season — capped her season with the championship-clinching goal, as she ran down a flick from Viggiano off a long pass from Mellett and tucked a shot into the far right corner of the goal.

“It’s the same two characters for us,” Edolo said of Hanemann and Mellett. “All season long, they just know where each other is going to be. They have been playing together since they were five years old, and they wanted it. When you want it bad enough, you do what it takes to get it.”

Senior goalkeeper Ava Bjorndahl could not pick up her 16th clean sheet of the season, but finished her four-year varsity career with 10 goals allowed in 24 matches for a Panthers team that picked up its 20th win of the season on Saturday.

“I trust her with my life,” Mellett said of Bjorndahl. “I say it before every game. I know every time the ball is coming to her, she is saving it, and when it does get by her, I know she is not giving up another one. We have such a strong back line. I have never had a doubt in our back line.”

Over the past three seasons, the current senior class has figured prominently in leading Point Boro to three consecutive SCT semifinal appearances, including an appearance in the championship game this season.

“My freshman year, we went through hell,” Mellett said. “Sophomore and junior year, it was so difficult losing games in sectionals. There are losses you have to deal with and overcome, and to get this far and win our last game is an amazing feeling.”

“We have been close the last few years in the state tournament, the Shore Conference Tournament,” Edolo said. “One-goal defeats psychologically messes with you. They kept at it. They kept grinding, they kept fighting and they really wanted this. They took the responsibility and got it done.”

The Central Jersey Group II championship was the first for the Panthers since 2015, which Point Boro won on penalties over Shore Conference rival Wall. For a team that had not even played in a state final, that was the pinnacle for Point Boro girls soccer — that is, until the Panthers beat Haddonfield, 4-0, on Monday to earn a chance to play for an overall Group title.

“After we won sectional finals, I realized we could get this far, and we were so much better than even we thought we were,” Mellett said. “I just know that the next three years that the juniors and sophomores and freshmen are going to continue the legacy. I just love every single one of them, and I’m so proud of them.”