Kapaun ends rival Carroll’s repeat state title bid in girls soccer thriller
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Article does not explicitly say Kapaun defeated Bishop Carroll in the quarterfinal match.
- Carroll went unbeaten on their way to last spring's Class 5A title.
- Kapaun ended Carroll’s bid to repeat as Class 5A girls soccer champion.
Bishop Carroll had spent the last two years turning Kansas high school girls soccer into its own championship story.
The Golden Eagles had gone unbeaten on their way to the Class 5A title last spring, becoming the first Wichita-area girls soccer team to win the 5A crown. They had lost just once in nearly two full seasons. And even when Kapaun Mt. Carmel pushed them to a regular-season tie last month, Carroll still entered Monday night’s quarterfinal with the aura of a team that knew how to survive.
Then Kapaun came into its rival’s home stadium and took all of that away.
With three first-half goals off set pieces and a brilliant two-goal performance from Oklahoma State commit Sara Claire Michaelis, Kapaun delivered a 5-3 road win that ended Carroll’s repeat bid and sent the Crusaders back to the Class 5A state semifinals.
“I can’t even put it into words how big this is,” Kapaun coach Anthony Cantele said. “They are such a good team, so to be able to win on the road and knock off the defending state champs, your biggest rival with everything on the line, it’s just hard to put into words. This is just a special, special group.”
Kapaun (16-2-1) will travel to St. Thomas Aquinas for Wednesday’s Class 5A semifinal with a spot in Saturday’s state championship game in Wichita on the line.
The Crusaders reached the semifinals last season for the first time since 2016 and finished third in 5A. Now they are headed back for the second straight year, something the program had not accomplished since its run of four straight semifinal appearances from 2007-10.
And they earned this return trip by turning dead balls into daggers.
Carroll controlled long stretches of the match and had the larger share of possession, but Kapaun controlled the moments that decided it. The Crusaders scored on a throw-in, then twice more on corner kicks before halftime, turning a rivalry quarterfinal into a showcase for the set-piece work Cantele said his team spends at least 30 minutes on every day in practice.
“We really wanted to make sure we optimized our chances as much as we could,” Cantele said. “We knew that was going to be at least a third of our opportunities.”
It took less than 10 minutes for that preparation to surface. Kapaun struck first off a throw-in with Michaelis finishing the chance to give the Crusaders a 1-0 lead. Carroll responded in the 20th minute, tying the score at 1-1 and settling back into the kind of possession rhythm that has worn down opponents for two seasons.
But Kapaun did not need to own the ball to own the match.
In the 25th minute, senior defender Annabelle Schaefer rose to meet a corner kick and powered a header past the goalkeeper, tucking the ball inside the left post for a 2-1 lead.
It was the kind of finish Kapaun had drilled all season, even if Schaefer admitted it had not always looked so clean in practice.
“We work on set plays every single day in practice,” Schaefer said. “I actually haven’t been able to finish very many times in practice, so to be able to find when it really counts was such a good feeling. All of that practice paid off.”
The Crusaders weren’t finished.
In the 38th minute, just before halftime, sophomore midfielder Hope Garner crashed the back side of the goal on another corner kick and connected with another header, this one carrying too much pace for the keeper to handle for a 3-1 lead.
“You can hold the ball as long as you want, but you don’t get any points for that,” Carroll coach Greg Rauch said. “One team got it done tonight and the other team did not. There’s definitely a lot of credit for Kapaun coming prepared and executing in the moment.”
Still, Carroll had spent two years making the rare deficit feel temporary.
The Golden Eagles came out of halftime exactly the way they needed to with senior Liza Dugan scoring on a corner kick in the opening minutes of the second half to trim Kapaun’s lead to 3-2.
For a moment, the match started to feel familiar. Carroll had its goal. Carroll had the momentum. Carroll had the confidence of a defending champion that had spent the last two seasons finding answers.
Kapaun’s response was not to retreat.
“The message was simple: nothing changes,” Cantele said. “We didn’t want to drop back and allow them to have their way. They’re too good and they would take advantage of that. So we didn’t want to change anything. We wanted to be aggressive and not slow down, just keep our foot on the gas.”
That was the sequence that separated Monday’s breakthrough from so many previous missed chances in the rivalry.
Instead of absorbing pressure and hoping to survive, Kapaun kept pushing.
In the 59th minute, senior Victoria Berends delivered one of the biggest strikes of her career, blasting a long-range shot that restored Kapaun’s two-goal cushion and made it 4-2.
Then Michaelis delivered the clincher.
With 11 minutes remaining, the junior star forward unleashed another strike that beat the goalkeeper and stretched Kapaun’s lead to 5-2. Carroll added a late goal, but the outcome was already decided.
Kapaun had finally beaten Carroll for the first time since 2019 and it had done so by ending the Golden Eagles’ championship reign on their home field.
“They’re the best in the state, as far as I’m concerned,” Cantele said of Carroll. “We told our girls that we were really going to have to work on defense because of how good Carroll is. That’s what made those set plays so big.”
The loss brought a crushing end to one of the best two-year runs in Wichita girls soccer history.
Carroll’s senior class of Avery McCorry, Dugan, Itzelle Lumbreras, Rachel Hawkins, Lauren Suellentrop, Josie Klausmeyer, Gracen Klaus and Elise Vermeeren helped take an already elite program to new heights. They were central to last year’s 21-0 season, a dream run that finished with Carroll becoming the first Wichita-area girls soccer team to win the Class 5A state title.
After experiencing that kind of joy last spring, Monday delivered the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.
“I’m sure at some point I’ll be able to look back and appreciate just how special 2025 was,” Rauch said. “But right now, it’s literally just complete devastation to say good bye to these seniors and to see 2026 go up in smokes.”
That is what made the win mean even more to Kapaun.
The Crusaders knew they were not just beating another postseason opponent. They were beating their rival, the defending state champion and the standard in Wichita girls soccer for so long.
They had already proven they could stand with Carroll in a 2-2 regular-season tie on April 30. On Monday, they proved they could finish the job.
“We knew it was going to be a hard game and we were really going to have to grind it out,” Schaefer said. “Our theme in practice this year has been, ‘find a way to win.’ I’m so glad we found a way to win in my last rivalry game.”
Now the Crusaders will try to carry the belief from Monday’s rivalry breakthrough into another state semifinal appearance.
For Schaefer, the meaning of the win was simple.
“Now that we beat them,” Schaefer said, “I feel like we can beat anybody.”
This story was originally published May 25, 2026 at 9:10 PM.
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