Staff file photo / Brian Yauger Bristol junior defender Jacob Clisby (20) chases the ball during the team’s home contest against Grand Valley.

For the first time in school history, both Bristol soccer programs are league champions. The boys team split the title with Badger, winning its first league title since 2000, and the girls won its league title outright, claiming the NAC crown for the first time since 2009.

“It’s huge,” boys coach Cory Schrecengost said. “I came into the program just wanting to have a winning record and a winning program, and for the past three years, we worked hard to get to where we’re at. Just sharing the league with Badger, that’s a huge, huge deal, especially with Badger, because they’re a very good soccer team, very well coached, and they’ve got a good program going on over there.”

The Panthers split with Badger this season, winning the teams’ first meeting, 3-2.

While making it look easy some days, finishing the regular season with a 14-2-1 mark, Bristol’s boys had some adversity along the way.

With a small roster of just 13 kids, substitutions came few and far between. But that only brought the team closer together. There were rough patches, including a 2-1 defeat to Mineral Ridge, but the Panthers bounced back from every stumble.

“We just stuck together as a team,” Schrecengost said. “After the first couple games, having a couple of rough days, we just came together honestly as a family and stuck together.

“I don’t know if it’s because of the low numbers or that they just have been playing together for the past three years that I’ve been around. They were a lot closer this year. They would go places after practices, or we’d get back from late games, and they would go get something to eat. … We told them they have to stick together in order to have a successful season. It’s got to be a family, and I think they realize that.”

Sophomore Logan Briggs led the Panthers in the regular season with 26 goals, averaging 1.5 goals-per-game. Senior Wyatt Clisby found the back of the net 23 times and also had 14 assists. Goalkeeper Ethan Clark averaged 8.8 saves-per-game and has tallied 150 this year.

Bristol’s girls program fared just as well in 2025. Outside of a 1-1 tie against Columbiana, the Panthers finished with an undefeated 16-0-1 record, setting a program record for wins in the process.

A bulk of their scoring came from a three-headed monster that gave opposing teams fits.

Led by senior Jenna Perris, who scored 32 goals, Deserae Raymond (25) and Lauren Church (17), the trio accounted for 74 of the team’s 92 goals. All three of them are averaging over one goal-per-game, and Perris sits just shy of two per game.

“The nice part with those three girls averaging a goal a game, is that teams can’t just focus on one person and go, ‘OK, we’re gonna mark her and have somebody else beat us,'” Panthers girls coach Mike Armour said. “When the other girls are getting shut down, we’ve had other girls step up at the right times, so that’s been big. Just the fact that a team can’t sit on one person and go, ‘We’re gonna shut Jenna down and make somebody else beat us.’ They have to guard all of them and it’s tough to stop. We found out that a lot of teams just can’t stop three of them coming at you when all three can score at any given moment.”

Armour is in his fifth season with the program, and it’s been a process building the team. Over the last three years, they’ve steadily gotten better, going from three wins to five, to now 16.

For Armour, it’s been exciting to watch the work pay off.

“It’s rewarding,” he said. “The first couple years, I had gotten girls that I really hadn’t coached before, so this is now my second or third group that I’ve coached all four years, and just the way that they buy into what we want to do and teaching them the game (has been amazing). For the past two years, they wanted to go play indoor, and last year we went down to Niles Wellness Center. They did very well down there, did a lot better with the touch on the ball, and it’s just exciting to see all their hard work pay off and to know that we are moving the program in the correct direction.”

Both teams host their first-round tournament matchup. The girls play today at 4:30 p.m., welcoming Crestview in a Division V, Northeast 1, sectional final. Bristol’s boys team plays host to Liberty on Thursday in a Division V, Northeast 3, sectional final.