SAN JOSE – Maggie Currie is nearly impossible to stop when given space on a soccer pitch. So adding rain to the equation in a 4-2 victory over Piedmont Hills on Tuesday evening made marking the Leigh attacking midfielder straight-up unfair.
“When I’m on the field with her, I feel like I’m watching someone play in a video game,” marveled Leigh teammate Katie Amanatullah.
Positioned as the playmaker in a 4-2-3-1 alignment, the North Carolina commit scored two goals, dribbled past defenders at will and powered a Longhorns team that has decimated opposing defenses all season and is expected to compete for Central Coast Section and NorCal titles.
Leigh’s players were still smarting from Thursday’s surprising 1-0 loss to Pioneer, the alma mater of USWNT stalwart and $1 million Chelsea transfer Naomi Girma.
Despite senior midfielder Kennadi Borg out with an illness and the Longhorns forced to abandon their favored 4-3-3, the attack hummed along on Tuesday for the Bay Area News Group’s No. 3 team. Freshman Shani Outlaw scored twice. She is one of three freshmen in the starting lineup for coach Nick Hatzke’s team.
“We have veterans, and we also have some freshmen in there stepping up, so I think we’re well-rounded,” Hatzke said.
The coach added that he trusts his players to make decisions without him micromanaging every aspect of the game, which was seen at halftime when, after Hatzke gave a few remarks, allowed the team to huddle up and discuss what needed to be done without coaches present.
“I put power in their hands and let them kind of decide what they need to do,” said Hatzke, who played high school soccer at Bellarmine and collegiately at Cal. “I think the more the communication comes from players on the field and during training, the more impactful it is on the match.”
Amanatullah held things down as the defensive midfielder, and wingers Tori Anderson and Emmi Pham provided width in attack.
In all, the Leigh team that ran roughshod over another opponent from the Blossom Valley Athletic League Mt. Hamilton Division – the South Bay’s top public school league – looked to be in top form.
“It is a very competitive league, and I think that’s what helps us maintain our level (of play),” Amanatullah said. “If we didn’t play teams at this level, it would be hard to keep up the high intensity.”
Leigh (12-1-2, 6-1) has now allowed just nine goals while scoring 43 this season.
And it’s not like the Longhorns padded stats against teams from outside of the BVAL.
They beat traditionally strong programs Los Gatos, Woodside and Monte Vista in non-league play while also drawing with West Catholic Athletic League power St. Ignatius.
“After having success in those games, it gave us a lot of confidence going into these BVAL games,” said Currie, who has now scored 16 goals this season.
Because of their dominance, the Longhorns are placed inside the Top 100 in MaxPreps’ national rankings and No. 14 in California.
In a Bay Area landscape consistently dominated by private schools, Leigh is the only public school in the region to crack the state’s Top 30.
“We don’t really care about being public or being private,” Currie said. “We just want to go out there and win.”
Playing at a high level is nothing new to Hatzke’s powerhouse.
Leigh has enjoyed success in regional play, where the Longhorns captured the Division II crown in 2022 and placed second in 2020.
“The leadership is very similar, and there’s a lot of players who can step up and take advantage of that,” said Amanatullah, who was a freshman on that Longhorns squad and is now asked to be one of several leaders on the team.
Although Leigh has lifted a NorCal trophy, the CCS is another story.
The Longhorns have reached the section championship match eight times – with four trips coming in five seasons from 1992-96 – but remain winless in CCS finals. Their most recent defeat came in 2021 to Mitty.
This year, Leigh might have the talent to break the streak.
“It seems like every year in CCS, we’ve made it to the semis or the finals and we can’t quite get past St. Francis or Mitty,” Hatzke said. “I think this year we have a really good chance, but we try not to think that far ahead. We just try to think about it one game at a time.”
