Sacred Heart is county title runner-up

The Sacred Heart Catholic Youth Organization seventh-/eighth-grade girls’ soccer team was the runner-up for the 2013 Nassau County CYO Championship title. The championship game was played at Town Park in Merrick on Sept. 17. Sacred Heart fell to St. Dominic’s of Oyster Bay 2-1 in the match.

Before that, Sacred Heart had accrued a record of 10-0-1 this season, finishing in first place in regular-season play and defeating St. Aidan’s of Garden City in the semifinal match, 5-2, the day before.

Before its championship loss, Sacred Heart had been undefeated for three years running and had won the CYO championship in 2011. The 2012 season was cut short because of Hurricane Sandy. The team, which comprises girls from Merrick, North Merrick, Bellmore, East Meadow and Roosevelt, was coached by George Fiederlein, Scott Brinton, who is the Herald Life's senior editor, and Stephen Collins. Maureen Coogan, of Merrick, founded the team when the girls were 5 and 6 years old. This is the squad’s last season of play, as CYO sports end in eighth grade.

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the girls wore pink wrist bands at games throughout October and collected donations for Circle of Hope, a breast cancer support group that is a project of the Chabad Center for Jewish Life of Merrick-Bellmore.

In all, the girls raised $320 for the organization, which has a wig bank for chemotherapy patients and hosts weekly support groups, run by social worker and Robbie’s Run founder Jill Levine, of Merrick.