FARGO \u2014 The Dakota Fusion 15U girls soccer team just won the National Presidents Cup last week and they\u2019re already back on the field, ready to keep working.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope more people realize that now that. We\u2019re good, we can be good in North Dakota,\u201d said Layla Becker.<\/p>\n
Playing in the National Presidents Cup wasn\u2019t just a first for the squad, it was redemption after two straight years of coming up just short.<\/p>\n
\u201cBeing finalists two years in a row in the regional tournament, I didn\u2019t want another finalist medal. I came, I won. I wanted that championship medal so bad,\u201d said team captain Jaden Melendez.<\/p>\n
Jaden came into the weekend with one clear mission.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe each pick a goal, and I had one specifically for this team. It was to raise the cup,\u201d said Jaden.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s exactly what they did, bringing home the national title.<\/p>\n
For Jaden, the victory was more than just a championship. With her dad as head coach, her mom as assistant coach, and her sister also on the team, it was truly a family affair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI could hear my mom yelling from the bench. Three minutes, three minutes. I was like, I know this game is done. We just locked up the win, and then just my dad coming off, hugging me with my little sister, getting to play, not only with my mom coaching, my dad coaching, and then playing with my little sister, just like the best family hug I ever experienced,\u201d said Jaden.<\/p>\n
But beyond the medals and memories, the team proved something bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just kind of to want it more than them, and just to, like, put our heart into the game, our heart and soul, and, like, play with everything we had and leave it all on the field,\u201d said Taylor Hodny.<\/p>\n
Now, as they look ahead, they hope their run can inspire others across the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we just paved a way, and it’s gonna show so many more teams what they can do. There’s tons of teams all over North Dakota. Soccer is picking up speed more and more every day, especially girls soccer,\u201d said Jaden.<\/p>\n
With their national championship trophy in hand and eyes set on the future, the Dakota Fusion 15U girls are proving that North Dakota soccer is a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FARGO \u2014 The Dakota Fusion 15U girls soccer team just won the National Presidents Cup last week and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-21743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}