The Milford Sports BLOG

MILFORD—Sometimes the journey to a state championship can be a long one.

For Foran girls soccer coach Stephen Bell, it only took 5.6 miles.

Bell, an assistant coach at Jonathan Law High School last fall, became the new head coach for the cross-town Lions in 2025 and led Foran to the Class M state championship.

Back on Nov. 15, the Lions bested Northwest Catholic by a 3-2 score to win Foran’s first title in girls soccer in its first-ever state championship game appearance.

Never would Bell have imagined it during the two-a-days of August’s summer heat.

“It wasn’t one of our, I guess, top realistic goals, as such,” Bell said the day before the Lions played for the title. “Not because we didn’t think we had the ability, but it’s my first year as the head coach here, so I was trying to lay down new identity to the program.”

Instead, Bell instilled what he called “realistic” goals for his Lions.

Making states was certainly one of those, but Foran also wanted to qualify for the SCC tournament, something it hadn’t done in a while.

“But to make the state final?” Bell asked. “That probably wasn’t on our radar. It’s never been done before.”

The turning point, Bell said, came in back-to-back losses in early October.

Foran was 5-3 and on successive days lost SCC league games to Amity (3-0) and North Haven (1-0).

At 5-5, the rest of the season could have gone one of two ways.

The Lions simply took a path that led to the state championship.

“That stretch of losses, it could go either way,” said Brooke Oliver, one of four Foran captains. “It was just really important in those moments to keep a calm level headed, and just remember what our team was about and what we can do for the rest of the season, how far we can go.”

“That was a defining moment for us,” Bell added.

The Lions simply went on a winning streak.

Foran closed the regular season with six straight wins, out-scoring its opponents by a 27-3 clip.

The Lions also qualified for the SCC tournament for just the second time since 2011.

In the first game of the tournament, Foran topped North Haven—a squad it had dropped two regular season games against.

That result showed how far Foran had come in those six games.

“We have a talented squad, so with any state cup or any form of tournament, it’s a game-by-game situation,” Bell said. “Sometimes a better team can lose, or a bit of luck goes your way or it doesn’t. And we’ve been fortunate. We’ve kind of made our own luck. We’ve been playing well, so we’ve deserved to win the games we’ve won.”

While the Lions did fall in the SCC semifinals, the squad went into the tournament with the same focus it finished the regular season.

Five wins later, including four straight shutouts leading up to the finals, Foran was hoisting high the championship trophy.

“The players, their desire, they could see what we were able to achieve,” Bell said. “We just focused on each game at a time rather than looking too far ahead and yeah, all the players, to be honest, they just kicked it up another notch.”

The scary part?

This was a very young Foran team with only four seniors atop the roster.

Oliver, one of those seniors, was joined by fellow captains Sophie Sinisgalli, Daniela Boutote and Allison Ryan, as the leaders of the squad that could have seen their lost to both the two-game winning streak and being unaccepting of such highly talented younger players.

“We see the girls as one team,” Ryan said. “So even though we have younger talent, we all play for the same goal. So, it’s whatever is best in the moment. And those young girls have so much talent that they really bring so much to the team.”

Maria Azpiri-Sudusky, a sophomore, netted the game-winning goal against Northwest Classic.

Sophomore Peighton Nash (from Alexis Lafferty, another sophomore) and Boutote had the others goals.

Foran junior goalkeeper Kayla Frederick made four saves in the title match.

Foran finished the season 17-6 and now it has a bullseye on its back heading into 2026.

“It’s always been like, ‘Who’s Foran?’” Boutote said. “But now we can leave that legacy behind, making it as far as Foran girls soccer has ever made it, and to leave that behind as seniors? We couldn’t have done it without our team and I hope we can just continue it into next season.”

The next journey to what could be another state title is less than a year away.