A season of firsts. Why not one more?
With aplomb, Christ School soccer now finds itself in unchartered territory – a state finalist in the NCISAA playoffs for the first time, a school record 18-game winning streak, and all indications that the team is peaking when the games matter most.
The Greenies (19-1) have a proverbial date with destiny Saturday when they travel to Covenant Day (15-4-1) to play for the NCISAA 4-A state championship. Kickoff is at 2 p.m. in Matthews, N.C.
“This is going to be a pretty special week,” Coach Guy Campbell ’00 said.
“Plenty of time to prepare, but none of us have ever been here before. But we’ve been together, we’ve been together since August 8th, so we’re just happy to still be together and training for another game.”
Christ School and Covenant played to a scoreless tie August 14 in Arden, and the Lions went on to win by penalty kicks. However, and this is a big however, the Greenies were without starting goalkeeper Felix Huebner ’26.
His presence and a rock-solid back line is why Christ School has allowed the fewest goals of any team in the NCISAA (five) and Tuesday night was one more shutout – albeit one that fully vanquished the memories of last year’s postseason disappointment.
Leading scorer Costa Barlas ’26 was marked by multiple defenders for most of the evening and yet still found a way to score twice in the second half of a 4-0 win over Carmel Christian Academy. Costa tiptoed the end line for his first goal with 18:02 to go in regulation, then electrified a big home crowd by going top shelf from about 20 yards out with 8:17 to play.
Davis Campbell ‘28 staked the Greenies to a 1-0 lead at the 14:31 mark of the first half, taking a feed from Taz Kasambara ’26 and lofting it over the reach of the Cougars keeper.
Declan Szostczuk ’26 was a late substitute and made it count, his goal with 38.1 seconds to go completed the scoring. The assist went to Wyatt Haddock ’27. Clayton Butler ’26 and Dominic Rose ’28 were also credited with assists.
Felix made a single save for his 14th shutout of the year.