Sky Blue FC completed a season wrought with ups and downs with a championship trophy. "We've been through a lot this year," Christie Rampone, the team's player-coach said. "But this team stuck together. Our goal coming into the playoffs was making sure we had each others' backs and playing with no pressure."

Rampone took over as a player-coach in late July when Kelly Lindsey resigned unexpectedly. This came after team management had already fired the team's first coach, Ian Sawyers. Also, two weeks before taking over coaching duties, Rampone had surgery for a ruptured ovarian cyst.

Adversity brought the players together. "We're a team of hard workers," Rampone said. "Battling back from last place just to get into the playoffs really did show the character and the fight we had." In the championship game against the Los Angeles Sol, Heather O'Reilly scored in the 16th minute for Sky Blue FC and Los Angeles' Allison Faulk picked up a red card for a foul on Natasha Kai. FC Sky Blue hung on for the win. "The fibers of this team are so close and so tight that nothing was going to break us," O'Reilly said.

 

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