Kentucky High School Daily’s Top 10 teams in each class heading into the last week of the regular season. (Rationale included for what I feel is pertinent.)

For some other notes/observations on Friday’s action, see the newest edition of Tailgater.

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The Martin County girls soccer team (15-2) defeated Johnson Central 3-0 in the 15th Region championship (played as a super regional). It was the Cardinals’ first victory in four straight trips to the region final, and with it they earned their first berth to the KHSAA Girls Soccer State Tournament.

Martin County — my alma mater, in the interest of transparency — hosts Russell (8-3) in the first round. The teams met in the regular season; the Cardinals won 5-0 at home. I spoke with head coach Steven Gauze — a nurse practitioner by day who’s been the program’s coach since 2013, when it was called Sheldon Clark — ahead of that game, scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 27.

Questions and answers lightly edited for clarity and flow.

KHSD: Winning 3-0 in a soccer match at this point in the season says a lot about your relative strength. What was the difference this go-around in the region final vs. the last three years?

Steve Gauze: I won't say just the seniors, but you know the thing about seniors is, especially this group, as soon as they hit high school, that was their first year of winning the, All “A” region tournament. And we've won it every year since they've been there. We've made it to the final four in the state in the All “A” and we've made it to the championship of the super region, but we've just never could get over that that hump.

And this year one of my captains, Faith Caldwell, she just said, "We are not going to lose to JC this year." And I mean, just the determination. You you could just tell by the way they played this year. You know, last year we were good, and I really feel like we were going to win it.

Last year we played JC in the regular season and we had a really bad first half, but we just come out of the All “A” state tournament, you know, it was like a two-day turnaround, you kind of expect us to be down a little bit. And halftime we're down three to nothing and I told them, "Hey, you know, we're playing terrible and they're only up three goals." And that's a lot, but still, I thought we were better than them. And then we went out and scored five goals in a half.

But when we hit the championship game, I mean, I really thought we were doing really, really good, but I don't know. We choked. That's—that's pretty much it. I think that, although I hated it, was probably one of the best things that could have happened, because this year there was none of that “I'm really nervous” feeling that showed from them. I'm sure they were, but they'd already been through it, you know what I mean? They were more determined that they were going to win it this year, and they did really well.

KHSD: Faith Caldwell leads you with 49 goals on the season (tops among all state-tournament qualifiers). I know it’s easy to look at stats like that and dismiss them from afar based on strength of schedule and the different styles of soccer played across the state. What kind of player is Faith? Who else stands out for y’all?

Gauze: If you look at our stats, she has more assists I think. If not, it's really close. (Note: Caldwell has 48 assists, which leads the state by a significant margin. She was tied for first in that category as a freshman and second each of the last two seasons.)

To me, that's the player you want. You want somebody that knows when to attack, but that is unselfish. And Faith is. She starts the attack, but she's willing to give the ball to somebody else who's in a better spot to score. You couldn't ask for a better player.

Jaz Jude, she's a sophomore. She plays forward for me, she's great on the attack, and tough as nails as a defensive mid. She does good with assists as well (Note: 22 on the season along with 27 goals). Annaleigh Davis, who's super fast out on the wing. She's always a threat to score. And then Faith's sister, Hope Caldwell. When you look at her stats, she’s not as good as those other players. But she's just that player that does a lot of good things that you never see in the stat sheet.

KHSD: What’s your soccer history? How’d you end up in this position?

Gauze: So the way I got into it was my son was actually in kindergarten, and I guess somehow they asked some of his friends and him to play. And so the person over the league at the time asked me, "Does Joshua want to play?" And I said, "Well, you know, sure, he wants to play." And she said, "Well, great, you—you get to coach the team." (laughs) So I come home and I told my wife, "Hey, guess what? Joshua's going to play soccer." And she said, "Well, that's good, because we don't know anything about it." And I said, "Well, that's bad, because we're going to have to learn: we're coaching."

So started playing and then my daughter started playing, and they were good at it. I took classes, went and got a coaching license. That started probably about 2008 and we got more serious around 2010, 2011. My kids started playing travel soccer, club soccer, and then I took over in 2013 for the high school.

I’ll never forget this. There was a girl that played for me, Gladys Meade, she was in middle school and there was not a middle school team at the time. And for whatever reason, the high school coach wasn’t going to be there anymore. She'd played her whole life with me and going into her freshman year there was no coach. Well, obviously, there's not a lot of soccer coaches around Martin County, and I'll never forget, she came to my office and she sat in front of me and she asked me to coach, and I said, "Gladys, y’know, I do this and that, my kids travel a lot and I'm not sure I can do it."

And then she started crying and she said, "Well, if you don't coach us, I won't get to play." And here we are. I’m a sucker when they start crying.

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