By Gary Curreri
Sun Sentinel Correspondent
Jul 15, 2021 4:54 PM
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Mary Slade Hartofilis with her coach Mario Rincon after her Team Boca U13 girls’ team won the US Youth Soccer Southern Regional Championship to qualify for nationals. (Kristy Whelchel Hartofilis/Courtesy)
Over a quarter of a century later, Boca Raton’s Mary Slade Hartofilis has an opportunity to do something that her mother couldn’t.
As a member of the Team Boca 13 and under girls’ soccer team, she will attempt to win nationals with her team — 27 years after her mother’s team came up short in 1993 and 1994.
The US Youth Soccer National Championships are taking place at the Premier Sports Campus at Lakewood Ranch, Florida through July 25.
Kristy Whelchel Hartofilis, 44, competed for Team Boca in the 1994 national tournament with her U18 girls’ team. It finished fourth that year, one year after placing third.
“I am so excited for her and her team and it has definitely brought back a flood of memories of what I went through with my team,” said Whelchel Hartofilis, who went on to play at Duke University, in the inaugural women’s professional soccer league, in Denmark and played with the US Women’s U-21 National team. She is also a member of the Palm Beach County Sports Hall of Fame for soccer.
Kristy Whelchel (now Hartofilis), right, with her coach Jim Blankenship after her Team Boca U14 girls won the Orange Classic tournament over 30 years ago. (Kristy Whelchel Hartofilis/Courtesy)
“It is just so great to see those relationships forming and building the same way they did back almost 30 years ago for me,” she said. “It’s been a long journey for them. They had the state cup qualification to be the state cup winners and then they won the regional tournament, which was grueling by having to play six games in seven days.
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“They have handled it with such grace and so professionally and so beyond their own years,” Whelchel Hartofilis said. “They are a special group of kids that handles the pressure and handles the competition so well.”
Mary, 12, the eldest of three children in the family, started playing at age 7 for Team Boca, the travel component of the Soccer Association of Boca Raton.
“It’s really crazy that my mom played at Nationals,” she said. “It is really cool that I am doing the same kind of stuff that she did.
“We talked about it during the season,” Mary said. “My mom would tell me how they won regionals and went to nationals and didn’t win it. Hopefully, we can. It is going to take a lot of sacrifices and a lot of hard work.”
Is it for bragging rights at the house?
“Yes definitely,” she said, smiling. “Sometimes I get compared to her and it is really cool because she was really good, I think.”
