With about four games left in the season, it became mathematically clear to the players and coaches of Queens Park Ladies, an under-12 girls’ soccer team in Bournemouth, England, that they would win their league.
But instead of resting on their laurels and enjoying the assured victory, they decided to go one step further: what if they not only won their league, but also did so without losing a single game?
If that wasn’t enough, they would make it as the only women’s team in a men’s league.
Reader, they did it. Queens Park Ladies did not lose any of their 22 matches, earning them the elusive nickname “Invincibles”, one that evokes memories of Arsenal’s unbeaten 2003-04 Premier League season under Arsène Wenger.
“I thought it was amazing that we came this far to beat some guys who are probably more physical than us,” said 11-year-old midfielder Millie Ray. “In fact, we went back and destroyed them.”
In interviews, the players praised each other and noted that they were also close friends, which helped their game.
“I’m so proud of my team and happy for us,” said Olivia Green, 12, team captain. “I didn’t expect it, but I thought we could do it.”
Skylar Henshall-Dicks, 11, said: “I knew we were a good team.” But looking back on the season, he said, she was even more amazed. “Now that we’ve done it, he seems even crazier,” he said.
Queens Park Ladies conceded just 11 goals in 22 games – “a brilliant statistic”, according to Toby Green, team manager and Olivia’s father.
Much of that is due to 12-year-old goalkeeper Mariah Silva.
“When they needed me, I did my job,” Mariah said. “Sometimes there’s a lot of pressure,” she said, especially during penalty kicks.
Mariah joined the team three years ago, when she moved to England from Brazil, where she was used to playing against boys. She has big ambitions for the future: “My dream is to become a professional footballer,” Mariah said.
Girls against boys
As their memorable 2023-24 season began, it took a while for kids on opposing teams to take the Queens Park Ladies seriously.
“Sometimes, especially at the beginning of the season when we hadn’t played them all yet, they would laugh,” said Edith Wragg, a 12-year-old defender. “They definitely underestimated us. But then we showed them that we were just as good as them.”
During the first game, their opponents seemed to assume that beating the girls’ team would be easy, said Skylar, also a defender. But after a 6-0 victory by Queens Park Ladies, her opponents were “pretty taken aback,” she said.
Other players recalled similar moments. “Sometimes they get a little angry,” Olivia, the captain, said of the opposing players. “I think they’re being a little silly.”
If anything, those attitudes served as a motivating factor, said Chris Wragg, the team’s coach and Edith’s father.
“The football field is a great environment to match,” Mr Wragg said. “The only barriers really are the ones off the field.”
‘These girls are serious’
Women’s football is a rapidly growing sport. In England, much of the enthusiasm around the sport can be attributed to the women’s national team, the Lionesses. They won the European Championship in 2022, an achievement that still eludes their male counterparts, and reached the Women’s World Cup final the following year.
While the Lionesses serve as role models for the 11- and 12-year-old Queens Park Ladies, the girls said they hoped to be an inspiring force themselves.
“We’ve all been thinking how great it is for other girls to see it and inspire them to play soccer,” Edith said.
In Bournemouth, on the south coast of England, interest in women’s soccer has increased in recent years, Green said. When the club, which has teams of various age groups, started about six years ago, there weren’t as many girls interested in joining the team, she said. There was no women’s league available at the time, so Queens Park Ladies also played in the men’s league, but with very different results.
“Those first seasons they won one game in two years and tied a couple,” Green said. “It was very difficult”.
The players spent the next few years training and playing against boys and girls. Once his team reached the under-12 league, Green said he contacted the county’s football association, the Hampshire Football Association, and got the girls admitted to the boys’ league after passing some slight doubts.
“Hampshire Football Association said, ‘Let’s try it,’” Green said. By finishing first this year, Queens Park Ladies have earned promotion to Division 2 for next season, where they will play 11v11 (instead of the current nine per team) and on a larger field for the first time.
“These girls mean business,” Green said. “They want to play at the highest level possible.”
Green said she planned to form a women’s team (which starts at age 16) with the club and work her way up to the big leagues. “That’s the master plan,” she said.
Mr. Wragg, the coach, first gained coaching experience more than 20 years ago during a summer on Long Island, New York, which proved to be a formative experience. At that time, he said, women’s football was not yet popular or common in Britain.
“It was considered unusual,” said Wragg, who has a Ph.D. in exercise physiology, he said. “But when I came to the United States back then, it was more of a girls’ sport than a boys’ sport.”
Mr Green said he hoped the growing popularity of women’s football would also mean better conditions for women’s football. “We know there is a gap between men’s and women’s football,” he said. “That difference is only due to the fact that men’s soccer has been around longer.”
But, she said, “the standards of women’s football are getting better and better every year.”