San Clemente Sweeps Away Trabuco Hills in Girls Soccer

Showtime returned to Thalassa Stadium Tuesday night, and one of the featured players put on a commanding performance for the appreciative crowd.

Senior Frannie Coxe scored three goals and came within a crossbar of another to pace San Clemente to its most dominating victory of the season. The result was a 5-0 thrashing by the Lady Tritons over visiting Trabuco Hills in the South Coast League.

 Coxe, a powerful 5-foot-10 midfielder, scored from every part of the field. Her first goal in the opening half was a 38-yard direct kick that she tucked perfectly into the upper right-hand corner. That gave the Tritons a 1-0 lead. At 22:48 of the second half, Coxe scored on a header, thanks to a 25-yard throw-in from junior Marlee Carrilo.

Then, 90 seconds later, Coxe left-footed a line drive from 30 yards that caught the lower-right corner of the net for the hat trick, her second in less than a year. The other came last March for her club team. Coxe now has five goals on the season.

“It was great to finally get one for this team. It really fired them up,” said Coxe, who was icing her left hip after the match. “We completely dominated this game, but there are still some things we can work on and do better. We wanted to redeem ourselves for last week, so when we came out tonight we were aggressive.”

San Clemente (8-2-5, 1-0-1 in league), ranked No. 6 in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 coaches' poll, tied El Toro in its league opener last week and had been winless in its past four matches.

Coach Stacey Finnerty said she wasn’t satisfied with the team’s play the last couple of games, but there was little she could find fault with after watching her team limit Trabuco Hills (8-5-4, 0-1-2) to two shots for the match.

“We finally got rid of that dark cloud over our heads. We came to play tonight,” Finnerty said. “We came in wanting to attack more. The girls committed to increasing the number of shots we took, and we executed much better.”

The Tritons came out firing, attempting seven shots in the first 10 minutes of the match and six on Mustangs’ goalkeeper Kassidie Stade before Coxe’s first goal. The lone bright spot for Trabuco Hills was the play of Stade, who kept the game close for the first 50 minutes before Coxe scored her second and third goals.

Freshman Nikki Farris and junior Janae Cousineau scored the other two goals.

So complete was the Tritons’ victory that they attempted 32 shots, 20 on goal, and would have scored more if not for Stade’s 15 saves, including several diving ones. The Tritons were whistled only once for offsides and allowed the Mustangs to dribble the ball past midfield only twice during the match.

The victory came at an opportune time for San Clemente. On Thursday, the Tritons travel to Mission Viejo to face the No. 5 Diablos. Then on Friday and Saturday, the Tritons will be in Arlington, Texas, to participate in the prestigious Red Bull Nolan Showcase, featuring many of the nation’s top high school teams.