At a school with no history and a football program experiencing growing pains, girls soccer has become king at Carroll County's Century.
Now, the first-year varsity team stands on the brink of a most unlikely coronation.
The No. 10 Knights (14-1) - whose roster includes 14 freshmen or sophomores, and not one senior - will challenge defending co-champion Bethesda-Chevy Chase for the Class 2A state title at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at UMBC.
For players, who came out of the pipelines of nearby South Carroll and Liberty last season to go 11-0-2 on JV in the school's first year of existence, the winning aura has had its perks.
"We just walk around [school] with our heads up, and people you don't even know come up and congratulate you," said midfielder Kelly Kasper, one of the team's elder statesmen as a junior. "[Opponents] usually come out and figure, 'Century? Who's Century?' Then we go out and beat them, and it's awesome."
Athletic director Craig Walker said that he's hoping the success will rub off on other teams at the young school.
"I think it's going to create that idea of 'yeah, we're supposed to win,' " Walker said.
For coach Vanessa Ozimek, the chance to mold so much raw talent has been a long-standing dream. Ozimek, 24, traces her coaching aspirations back to her sophomore year at Penfield High near Rochester, N.Y.
"It probably hit me in about ninth or 10th grade," Ozimek said. "I was playing on the JV level, and really just connected with my coach."
That coach, Pam Lehnert (now Creighton), shunned the oft-opted-for role of dictator, instead listening to her players about what they saw on the field and heeding suggestions.
On the varsity, where Ozimek became a captain her senior year, coach Ken Andrews took the idea a step further, escorting his players on team retreats under a program called "Natural Helpers," designed to help kids to become problem solvers.
"We worked on some of the techniques for getting kids to communicate," Andrews said.
One of the ways was for players to write down things that were bothering them and slip them into what Andrews called a "worry box."
"I'd just dump the box once a week," Andrews said. "It was part of our philosophy that the team belonged to the kids. Of course, we were in charge [of] big decisions, but the little decisions - like what to wear or what kind of music for the warm-up - were their choice."
Now, similar philosophies are prominent at Century, where Ozimek is wrapping up her first year as varsity coach after sharing the job of JV coach a year ago. One of her main techniques is to have players analyze their games as a group.
"Their voices have been really important to me and to them as players," Ozimek said. "Even though I'm seeing that stuff going on out there and I continue to elaborate on what they're saying, they're taking the initiative."
Of course, it takes more than philosophy to build a winner. The Knights also have quite an abundance of talent.
Buoyed by a roster full of club-experienced players out of the nearby Freedom Recreation Council and the Washington-Area Girls Soccer League, Century boasts one of the most precise and potent passing games in the state, as well as much speed.
"I knew we had a good team, because we've played together for a long time, but I wasn't sure we could go this far," junior Mandy Psenicska said.
The team relies mainly on its athletic outside halfbacks, who have mastered the art of using the sidelines to their advantage, putting moves on defenders and finding open forwards in front of the goal. The midfield core includes team scoring leader Amanda Bradley, a freshman with 11 goals and nine assists, as well as Brittany Eger, Lindsey Holbrook, Allison Austin and Stephanie Dickerson, the last of whom Ozimek moved up from the defense to take better advantage of her speed
Austin and Dickerson, in fact, comprised half of Century's state runner-up 400-meter relay team last spring, with Dickerson winning Sun Carroll Track Performer of the Year honors.
Two other players, forwards Kasper and Lauren Schwarzmann, added experience. Schwarzmann, a junior, played for South Carroll in 2000, while Kasper played for the Cavaliers through last year.
It was Kasper who helped teammates gain perspective after the team's lone loss - 1-0 in overtime - against powerful Urbana in early October.
"I've never seen anyone get so upset [over a loss]," Kasper recalled, noting that the team had gone 11-0-2 last year on JV. "They hadn't lost a game since they'd been here. I was trying to tell them, 'Come on, it's OK.' "
Where most players saw failure, however, others, including Ozimek, saw potential.
"Although it was hard for a lot of players, at the same time it kind of helped set a boundary where we realized that, 'Hey, look at the fight we put up against a team with such a good program,' " Ozimek said.
Now, Century has but one fight left, against a Bethesda-Chevy-Chase team that hasn't allowed a goal all season.
"I want them to stay calm; I want them to stay focused," Ozimek said. "We can't change things up. We need to continue to do what got us here."