Port United looks to build on breakout 2024 season
By JP BUTLER
Special to The Olean Star
BRADFORD, PA — In seven years as both an assistant and head coach of the Bradford High girls soccer team, Jim Warnick has been nothing but … well, immensely successful.
Warnick, who aided Warren Shaw for four years before taking the reins in 2022, helped guide the Lady Owls to six-straight District 9 Class AAA championships (from 2018-23), including two as the boss (2022, ‘23). He’s coached four of the last six Big 30 Players of the Year — Regan Johnson (2019), Maddi Cowburn (2021, ‘22) and Bella Prince (2024) — and the program’s only two 100 goal/100 assist players (Cowburn and Prince).
And he’s led Bradford to the last two District 10, Region 6 league titles.
ENTERING HIS fourth year at the helm, Warnick believes the 2025 Lady Owls to be capable of maintaining that lofty standard.
In this instance, however, success — at least the kind that Bradford is accustomed to — might be a little slower going. And it will come with the Lady Owls being among the hunters rather than the hunted.
Though it lost just two seniors from last year’s 15-5 squad, Bradford will be without Prince, a three-time Big 30 All-Star and the reigning Player of the Year, who accounted for 38 goals and 37 assists last fall, plus defensive anchor Grace Close.
“And, for us, it’s gonna be really tough to replace somebody like Bella,” Warnick said of Prince, who finished No. 1 in program history in assists (124) and No. 3 in goals (137). “She was a team leader, a captain, an all-time player. But it was just … she tried to do everything. If somebody else was down, she tried to pick up their play.”
Then, too, the Lady Owls will be a bit lighter in numbers, featuring 17 total players, including a couple of part-timers who play other fall sports, a bit younger than usual, listing nine freshmen and sophomores, and a bit less familiar, with some potential returners opting not to play this year.
As a result, Bradford “really only has a handful of actual starters coming back.”
“So, we’re relying on a lot of younger girls,” Warnick acknowledged. “We’re down, we have a very small team. Even in our scrimmage the other night, we only had 14 girls there. It makes it tough on the starting 11; they’re not gonna get very many breaks.”
Still, he continued, “I think some of the girls are gonna step up, it’s just gonna be a matter of if we can get everybody to play together, because we do have some freshmen (who are) gonna be starting, trying to fill some areas.”
For Warnick, that’s one small reason to remain optimistic about Bradford’s prospects.
But for the Lady Owls, there are several much larger ones.
ASIDE FROM Prince and Close, Bradford returns much of its remaining core … and it’s an excellent one.
That group includes junior striker Alyssa Mangold, who led the Big 30 with an eye-popping 47 goals last season (14 more than the second-place finisher), and senior defenseman Jaydon Hogue. Both were named Big 30 All-Stars in 2024.
Also back is senior goalkeeper Madalyn Stark, a four-year starter who allowed just 25 goals in 20 games last season and recorded an impressive 15 shutouts amid a stellar 18-3 campaign as a junior, plus seniors Kiersten Taylor and Rylie Corbett, who chipped in eight goals apiece last year.
Beyond being talented, these Lady Owls also hail from a winning culture.
In three years under Warnick, Bradford has gone a glittering 47-13, with two District 9 crowns, two league titles and two trips to the PIAA state playoffs. On many nights, they haven’t just won, they’ve dominated (last year alone, 10 of their 15 wins came by five goals or more).
And so, yes, there will be growing pains, Warnick admitted. But all the elements seem to be there for yet another standout campaign.
“I think it’s gonna be one of those things where things gotta align for us,” said Warnick, who won Big 30 Coach of the Year honors as a first-time head coach in 2022. “But for those freshmen, there’s still that learning curve.
“Even when we’ve had the top girls, we’ve struggled with getting that going in the beginning of the season. Having freshmen, they’re nervous, they don’t want to make mistakes, and I think once they ease into it, that’ll help everybody.”
BRADFORD, at least in the early stages, will lean on the goal-scoring prowess of Mangold and Stark’s skill and experience.
“We’re gonna have to rely on (Maddy) to make a lot of big saves,” said Warnick, before noting: “We try not to put all that pressure on her. We always tell her, ‘Hey, five or six saves every game is what we expect and the rest of the team’s gotta pick up the slack.’ I think she does that … she puts in the work.”
It’ll hope to have a more battle-tested team come October. But the biggest key, Warnick added, “will be keeping everybody healthy. We can’t afford to have any injuries or it’s really gonna put a bind on our season.”
A year ago, Bradford’s run of six-straight Class AAA championships came to an end with a heartbreaking 2-1 loss to DuBois in the D9 final — a team which handed the Lady Owls three of their five setbacks. But for as painful as it was, perhaps there was some good to come of it: Bradford will now enter this year without the pressure of having to keep that strike alive, but with the hunger to return to their title-winning ways.
“Overall, DuBois is probably gonna be the team to beat for the next 3-4 years,” noted Warnick, who also described Warren as a team on the rise. “We joked about it (recently): We went six-straight years of winning championships and now, finally, we don’t have that target on our back; somebody else does …
“Which takes a little pressure off, but it also puts a little bit there of trying to get back to the top.”
PORT ALLEGANY/SMETHPORT
There were signs that this kind of jump might have been on the horizon.
In 2023, Matt Lawton inherited a Port Allegany/Smethport squad that had gone 6-10 a year earlier and coaxed a 5-10-2 mark out of the young Lady Gators, which included a quartet of losses by two goals or fewer and second-place finish (3-2-1) is the UAVSL Small School North division.
Given Port A/Smethport’s youth and limited depth, this could certainly have been viewed as progress. And with most everybody set to return, “Port United,” as the joint venture has come to be known, seemed poised to take a significant next step.
And then, the Lady Gators took it.
Behind Ellie Yeager, Kailey Bartlett and goalkeeper Hannah Taylor, Port A/Smethport forged a solid 10-6-2 record (and three of those losses came in overtime), won the UAVSL North (5-1-0) and made the District 9 playoffs, where they bowed to No. 2 Brockway, 5-0, in the Class A semifinals.
It was, inarguably, Port United’s best season since absorbing Smethport in 2021 and the most successful campaign for Port Allegany, which had long been the lone solo program of the two, in recent memory. And it led to Yeager making the league all-star team, Bartlett earning both Big 30 and league all-star honors and Lawton garnering consideration for Big 30 Girls Coach of the Year.
Now, they want more.
And that seems to be a more-than-reasonable goal.
Yeager, Port United’s leading scorer with 21 goals, has since graduated, but Lawton, Bartlett, who finished with 13 goals and 13 assists, and Taylor (six shutouts) are back, as is a handful of other playmakers, including Hannah Himes, Kylee Pelchy, Ketha Line and Alayna Palmer.
Of Bartlett’s standout junior season, Lawton noted: “Kailey’s one of the best at set pieces. We scored from seven of her corner kicks this season. She scored one of her goals directly from a corner kick.
“Without her and Ellie, we would not have had the success that we had last season.”
In total, Port A/Smethport returns six seniors and now has an experienced winner after logging double-digit victories for the first time since at least the COVID-shortened 2020 campaign. And that has Lawton’s group excited about its prospects for the coming season.
“The Port United girls varsity soccer team is looking to continue the success from last year,” Lawton said. “We’re looking to make the playoffs and challenge for another league title (UAVSL North). Our senior leaders, (Kailey) Bartlett, (Ketha) Line, (Hannah) Himes, (Hannah) Taylor, (Kendra) Meade and (Journey) Wilmoth, are looking to lead the team and help support the younger and newer players.
“The team has worked hard in the off season and are excited to kick off the season.”
And it could well be another good one in Port Allegany.
