GI's Raepple helps soccer team make history

Sports

July 21, 2010

Staff Reports Niagara Gazette The Niagara Gazette Wed Jul 21, 2010, 12:01 AM EDT

NIAGARA FALLS — Grand Island’s Jenna Raepple recently played a part in what is being touted as the best season ever by a local youth soccer club.

The Buffalo Soccer Academy Invaders under-16 girls became the first team from Western New York to make it to the U.S. Youth Soccer Region I championship game earlier this month.

The Invaders, coached by former Buffalo Blizzard star Rudy Pikuzinski Jr. and his son, Rudy III, a former Canisius College captain, culminated a 21-2-3 season with a run to the regional title game in Huntington, W. Va.

They won their first four games at the tournament, beating a pair of teams ranked among the top 10-2 nationally, by a combined score of 19-7, before losing the title game to another top 10 team, the Virginia Strikers.

One more win would’ve put the Invaders in the national final four.

The Invaders did come back from the trip with the Fair Play Award for the sportsmanship.

According to a representative of the Invaders, no girls team from Western New York has ever made it as far as the Region I semifinals, and the last time a boys team made it to the semifinals was the U14 Amherst Arrows in 1981.

In order to qualify for the Region I tournament, the Invaders had to win the State Cup Championship in Cortland in June against a tough field that include three teams bound for the Region I Premier League next season.

Raepple, a rising senior at Grand Island whose older sister Jamie is entering her sophomore year at Niagara University, was joined on the team by Niagara Frontier League rivals Christina Sarokon (North Tonawanda), and Jenna and Lexi Panepinto (sisters from Kenmore West).

“To be one of the only teams to go that far at such a high level is an amazing accomplishment and we’re really proud of ourselves because we worked very hard to get to that spot,” said Sarokon, the team’s goalkeeper.

Raepple, Sarokon and the Panepinto sisters will team up again this week with fellow Invaders Catherine Williams, Alexis Kroese and Jenny Piaggione on the Western region’s scholastic women’s soccer team in the Empire State Games.

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