Port Washington soccer player wins national title

Port Washington High School all-conference soccer player Meghan Zwicker followed up a stellar spring season with an unforgettable summer.

Zwicker scored the game-tying goal in the final seconds of the national championship game of the United States Youth Soccer Association Presidents Cup in Greensboro, N.C., this month, and the team went on to win the title.

The Lakeshore United FC U-19 Navy 03 team was down, 1-0, in a rematch with California/Albion SC, which handed it its only loss in pool play, 2-0, when Zwicker asked an official how much time was left in the game.

“He said ‘We’ve got about a minute left.’ I started getting upset on the field because we were going to lose this,” Zwicker said.

Then, Lakeshore United got a chance at a corner kick.

“I said to one of my teammates, ‘This is it. This is our last play,’” Zwicker said.

Erica Herzog of Sheboygan North High School sent the ball to the center of the field.

Zwicker took it from there.

“I was fighting off, like, three girls. I just punched it as hard as I could into the back of the net,” she said.

The ball made it just over California/Albion’s long outstretched keeper.

“She was big,” Zwicker said.

So was that moment.

“It was breathtaking that I got it. I was crying on the field,” she said.

The game went into overtime tied, 1-1, but Lakeshore United had turned the momentum. Their players ran off the field at the end of regulation, while their opponents walked.

“Overtime, I was speechless. My coach was talking to me. I couldn’t talk,” Zwicker said. “Adrenaline was, like, through the roof.”

Oostburg star Ashley Ternes led her leg do the talking. A ball sailed into the air within her strike zone, and she sliced it for a goal, according to a Lakeshore United news release.

Lakeshore United possessed the ball enough in the final 15 minutes and held on for the championship, making Wisconsin history.

It is the first female team from Wisconsin to qualify for and win the National Presidents Cup.

“It was surreal. As the final whistle blew, I watched the players rush to one another on the field to celebrate and was overjoyed for them. It was if the outcome of their journey ended as it does in those feel-good sports movies we all love to watch,” coach Jim Veeser said in a release.

“It was great to see a group of well-deserved young players achieve what they had set out to do eight months ago, and it was done by working hard, respecting one another, caring about each other, never giving up and celebrating each other’s successes along the way — a true team.”

The team had more inspiration than winning a colossal cup and gold medal, however.

One of its players, Kenzie Koppenhaver of Kiel, was in a car accident on Christmas Eve 2021, sustaining a traumatic brain injury and was in a coma for days. She had surgery to release pressure on her brain, but within months was allowed to start playing soccer again.

“She was like the class clown on our team. She was funny, she was loud,” Zwicker said.

“I think that made us come together even stronger as a team. We had something we were fighting for. We wanted to win it for her. I think Kenzie was a lot of our motivation.”

It’s not like the team wasn’t already close.

“I don’t even call it a team. We are all just a family. This is an amazing group of girls. I’ve never met such an individual group of amazing girls. I love them to pieces,” Zwicker said.

“Just the way we play together is insane. You run into drama with girls and we don’t have any of that.”

In the national qualifying round in St. Louis in late June, the team won five games in five days, and Zwicker shouldered one of the biggest roles.

Koppenhaver wanted to play, and Zwicker said Veeser hesitantly agreed to put her in for a short time. Koppenhaver was to play up top with Zwicker.

“She even asked me before she got in, ‘Meghan, will you protect me when I’m on the field?’” Zwicker said.

Zwicker did her job.

“Wherever she went, I went,” she said.

Koppenhaver is still improving, Zwicker said.

A GoFundMe page to help the family with medical costs is at www.gofundme.com/f/support-the-koppenhaver-family.

Updates on Koppenhaver’s progress can be found at https://bit.ly/3S3Hje4.

Zwicker wasn’t the only local player on the Lakeshore United team. Cedar Grove-Belgium star Cora Erickson, whose 55 goals was second in the state this season, was also a member.

Erickson played in the games in the regional tournament in St. Louis but missed the national championship games because she played with the Wisconsin International Team in a tournament in Spain during that time.

“It was so cool. I was so proud of them,” she said of her Lakeshore United team.

She knew Koppenhaver was the inspiration.

“All the girls wanted to win it for her, I think,” Erickson said.

Erickson’s other team played seven games in 10 days, including three games in one day, and advanced to the semifinals of the Donosti Cup, where it lost to a team from Portugal. Competition included teams from Spain, France and California. The tournament had about 700 teams; 48 were in Wisconsin’s division.

“We did pretty good,” Erickson said.

She said she loved taking in the mountainous scenery of Spain. Her favorite spot was the beach.

“It was really pretty where we were,” she said.