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Gulf Coast Grad Stars in Sun Belt Underdog Story
We all love a good underdog story. From David and Goliath, to literally every NCAA March Madness upset in history. There is something about cheering for someone when the odds are stacked against them.
But the University of Louisiana never thought of themselves as the underdog, said team captain and centerback Aila Swinton. The Ragin’ Cajuns hadn’t made the Sun Belt Conference Women’s Soccer Championship Tournament in 2024 and this time around they snagged the last chance as the number eight seed. But they were a lot more focused on the fact that they made it.
“Going into the game I had a little pep talk with the team,” Swinton said. “It’s not up to anyone but us now. I told the team don’t doubt any moment that’s handed to you. Go into this game and act like a champion because we have done so much throughout the season to get here. We have all the values inside of us. All we have to do now is show it.”
Their opponent was number one seed University of South Alabama. The Jaguars had a strong season and were no strangers to the tournament, having made it to Foley every year since it began being hosted there in 2016. They’d also won the tournament five times in their last 10 appearances. When the Ragin’ Cajuns met them earlier in the year they fell 3-0 but Swinton said that still wasn’t weighing on the minds of her team.
“I don’t think playing South Alabama scared us, knowing that we lost our first game to them,” Swinton said. “That was our first conference game and we were a completely different team then. We played in a different formation against them the first time. We know we had a strong performance against them even though the goals don’t show it.”
For the first 59 minutes of the tournament’s quarterfinal match up Louisiana fought with all they had and the game remained scoreless. But then goalie Natalie Mayes was issued a red card when she jumped on a loose ball just outside the box. Now the Ragin’ Cajuns faced the rest of the game against the number one seed playing a man down. And oh yeah, their backup goalie hadn’t traveled with the team because of a possible concussion. The coaches were weighing their options and from the bench a player called out, “We should put Aila in goal!”
Swinton has had a long history with soccer. She began as so many do, playing multiple recreational league sports including lacrosse, softball, and basketball. Eventually around middle school she had to decide what to pursue and she chose soccer. Recreation soccer leagues turned to club soccer leagues. Playing in California, turned to playing in Gulf Breeze, Florida when her father, a U.S. Marine, moved the family across the country.
She played for the Dolphins while also practicing with the Gulf Coast Texans and playing for Elite Club National League teams in Atlanta and Jacksonville. There were a lot of choices when it came to deciding where to play college ball, but she thought Kennesaw State was the right fit for her at the time. She played well as a freshman, was injured as a sophomore, and after her junior year felt it was time to move on. While she was so incredibly grateful to everyone associated with the Owls, she wanted the opportunity to grow even more as a player and entered the transfer portal. Swinton said after a visit to Louisiana she knew she’d found home.
“I went on a visit and let me tell you this was the best decision I ever made,” Swinton said. “The girls were just so kind and you can tell they were dedicated to the sport. They had a passion I hadn’t seen in a while. I just really liked the environment here.”
But in all that time, California to Florida to Georgia to Louisiana, recreation to club to college, Swinton only has a very brief memory of playing goalie.
“Maybe in my recreation days I played goalie,” Swinton recalls. “I have a vivid memory of me playing for the Purple Panthers recreation team. We alternated goalies obviously and one day they put me in goal. I was like, ‘I don’t think I like this.’ I wanted to be on the field scoring goals, putting in tackles, and passing the ball.”
But there she was walking from the huddle of field players over to the sidelines where her coaches first pitched the idea of putting her in goal to see if she felt it was something she could do. A true team player she said, “Yeah okay, I can do that. Whatever you need. I trust you.” to the cheers and encouragement of her teammates. She was handed the too large but only available pink goalie jersey and told to run into the tent to change. It was there an incredibly emotional Mayes, having just left the game, took her opportunity to help the team from the sidelines by whittling down a career of goalkeeping to one simple piece of advice she could impart before Swinton had to take the field.
“I’m putting on the gloves about to turn and (Mayes) takes me by my shoulders bawling her eyes out and said, ‘Aila all it takes to be a goalie, the most important thing, is confidence. That’s all you need to do your best, just have confidence.’”
And that’s exactly what Swinton did, walking onto the field, clapping and hyping up her team. It was then that one of the most thrilling games in Sun Belt Women’s Soccer history really got going. A man down with a goalie that had last played the position with the Purple Panthers, and up against a number one seed, the Ragin’ Cajuns showed everyone exactly what kind of team they were.
“All I can think in my head is confidence, confidence, (Mayes) told me confidence. I trust (Mayes) so I need confidence.” Aila recalls. “But what gave me the most confidence wasn’t how many saves I made, it was how well my back line was doing. They were really putting up a fight. You could see the grit in every tackle they made, going for every ball and never backing down. Knowing we were a man down and still getting a number of opportunities on goal, just that gave me confidence that we were still in that game. If felt like if they were working hard I needed to work hard too.”
If it’s possible for an entire stadium and hundreds of people watching on ESPN to collectively hold their breath that’s exactly what happened and they held it through the end of regulation, two overtime periods and into penalty kicks. Swinton was back in goal for the penalty kicks. The Ragin Cajuns up first put it in the back of the net. South Alabama matched it. The Cajuns didn’t take their foot of the gas and buried a second kick. South Alabama’s opportunity went off the cross bar putting Louisiana in front. Then Swinton calmly walked out of the net, took off her goalie gloves, approached the ball and drilled her penalty kick into the goal. Cool as a cucumber with a big smile, she put the gloves back on and blocked the Jags next chance, putting the Cajuns up three to one. There it was, an ending about to be written on an incredible Cinderella story, but unfortunately the slipper didn’t fit. The Cajuns didn’t make the next three shots and South Alabama made them all to advance to the semifinals.
But Swinton said it never felt like a loss, there were no regrets because they left everything out on the field. For her and her teammates it was a game that will be remembered forever.
“I had told my team to think of this like a historical moment,” Swinton said. “You will never be on this field with this specific group of girls in this specific circumstance, man down, field player in goal. This will never happen in your life ever again. Take it and don’t regret anything you put on the field. I was so proud being a part of a team like that.”
The lessons learned from her final match and a lifetime of soccer are ones Swinton will take off the field now that her days of playing college ball are over. Her dream is to become a physical therapist and she is now employed as a PT tech. She said at first she was pretty shy with patients until her boss told her she knows what she’s doing she just needed to be a bit more confident. So she started channeling what she felt on the field.
When asked if she had any advice for those young recreational league players, just like the Purple Panther she had once been, she said it would be the same thing her coach told her. It all starts with practice.
“The advice I’d give is something my coach here Chris says, confidence comes from practice and from doing something over and over again. Even though I didn’t practice being goalie over and over again I practiced other things, like being a leader on this team,” Swinton said. “Be confident in who you are, in your morals and your values. Then let that carry into how you approach things and the actions that you take. Once you’re confident in that, you can take it into anything you do.”
While Aila has played her last, likely most epic, game as a Ragin’ Cajun, she knows soccer will always be a part of her life whether giving lessons or officiating or even just kicking the ball around by herself. The sport has become a part of her in the same way her last game has become a part of Foley Sports Tourism and Sun Belt history. The kind of game you never forget, dare it be said, the stuff of legend when the underdogs that were cheered so hard for may not have won the game, but they won over a whole new group of fans.
