As Cape Tech Girls Soccer Keeps Growing, Teaching Moments Happen On Field

PLEASANT LAKE – Numbers used to be an issue for the Cape Cod Tech girls soccer team.

Not so anymore. The program has risen incrementally from 11 players on the roster in 2023 to 15 in 2024 to 22 last year. This year, there’s 23 players rostered at the outset of the season.

Nevertheless, the quick progression entails growing pains. About half of the team is genuinely brand new to soccer, according to first-year head coach Ellen Muir.

“We had three games our first week. It's like trial by fire,” Muir said.

But having so many players getting introduced to the game on the fly also naturally generates those notable breakthrough moments, like what the Crusaders saw last Friday as they hosted Mashpee.

Cape Tech was down big with about 14 minutes remaining — and easily could have stopped playing hard — when freshman Isa Do Carmo dashed into the box and popped a bloop shot over the jumping Mashpee keeper to put the Crusaders on the board.

It was Do Carmo’s first career goal in her first career full game. She had played, at most, about five minutes in a prior match.

“It shows a little bit of heart, and I'm really excited about that,” Muir said.

The Crusaders are searching for their first win (as of The Chronicle’s Tuesday deadline), but they’ve had battles that could have gone either way.

Against Upper Cape Tech on Sept. 10, the Crusaders trailed 2-0, then 4-2, but stormed back to a 5-5 draw. Senior Gabi Freitas had a hat trick while fellow seniors Sophia Riker scored twice and Bella Bigley scored once.

In addition to that high-scoring tie, there’s been two one-goal losses.

“I'm hopeful that now that we're further into the season, have played together a little bit more, that we’ll show better at those one-goal losses and get a couple of wins there for sure,” Muir said.

The amount of players totally new to the sport of soccer on the team has also provided an opportunity for the others more experienced with the game to educate their fellow players. Muir leaves the captains (Freitas, Riker and junior Frannie Mendoza) in charge of warm-ups. She asks them to speak at halftimes and the ends of practices — to provide their input as leaders.

“The girls that know the sport are really trying to teach the other kids, which I think is cool, and they don't seem to get too frustrated when things fall apart,” Muir said. “Like they're trying to keep their heads in it.”

That resilience of spirit was evident against Mashpee. The Crusaders trailed 9-0 until Do Carmo’s goal, but that kind of margin would have been impossible to ascertain just by monitoring the energy and emotion of the Cape Tech players.

Do Carmo’s score might have very well produced the biggest cheers on and around the pitch that afternoon.

“I think they're hopeful, and I think that they can see that they're building a program,” Muir said. “More and more girls are joining and wanting to be a part of it.”

This year’s group has a goal-scoring core in Freitas and Riker, plus the knowledgeable Bigley, who can play any position on the field. 

Against Mashpee, Bigley played as a forward, a back and even at goalie (after the starting keeper briefly recovered on the sideline following a collision).

“You could really put her anywhere, so she's a strong player for sure,” Muir said.

The Crusaders have also had to persevere through circumstances completely out of their own control. Some of the team’s strongest members are recovering from serious blows dealt over the summer, like one player who broke her leg after getting hit by a car and another who became very sick. Adding to the misfortune was a pair of players who were in a car accident the day before the match against Mashpee and were expected to be out for a period of time. 

No doubt, those are difficult conditions to endure for a team coming off one of their best seasons in recent memory. In 2025, Cape Tech finished 6-9-2, tripling their win total from the previous year (the three seasons before that, the team had gone winless, framing in full perspective the rapid progress of the program).

“I think it's a mix of both the high expectations from last year, but also things happened in between then and now that aren't within our control, and we're trying to keep going,” Muir said.

This certainly isn’t the first coaching gig for Muir, a math teacher at Cape Tech. She’s served at other school sporting posts around the region. 

And in fact she originally planned to only join former head coach Eric Rondina’s staff as an assistant. Rondina’s job as a diver currently necessitates working in Maine two weeks every month though, according to Muir. He called her over the summer to tell her she’d have to take the official helm. But he’s still involved with the team.

“He'll probably have texted me 15 times already today to see how the game went,” Muir said after Cape Tech played Mashpee.

With some girls able to remember last year’s success and some outright new to soccer, the roster’s composition is a unique blend. Perhaps it’s that combination that leads to moments like Do Carmo’s milestone Friday. 

Maybe just a first-ever goal in an already decided game — but by the reactions, Do Carmo’s teammates knew how important it really was.

“We're all supportive of the players and teaching them because there's a lot of new girls to the sport, so every game's a teaching moment for sure,” Muir said. “So I'm just proud of them for hanging in there.”