For the first time since 2018, the Orange Middle School Chargers have won the Orange Person Athletic Conference women’s soccer championship. The Chargers defeated McDougle Middle School 2-1 in the OPAC Championship game in Chapel Hill last May. It was the third year in a row that the Chargers won the Northern Division championship and reached the OPAC title game. Camila Viera, a sixth-grader, scored the opening goal for the Chargers against McDougle. In her final game at Orange Middle, 8th grader Hannah Wimsatt scored the game-winning goal. The leading scorer for Orange in 2026 was 8th grader Hyland Gephart, who scored 16 goals. Wimsatt finished the season with 12 goals. Gigi Goode scored eight goals. Orange Middle’s head coach, Jim Mathewson, was once the head coach of the Chargers boy’s soccer team in the 1990s, when it was known as Stanford Middle School. After coaching Carolinas Friends school for 18 years, he thought his career was over in 2017 when he retired. One of his former Charger players, Eric Gephart, called him out of retirement to return to Hillsborough. It led Orange Middle women’s soccer back to the top of the OPAC. Last spring, Orange Middle won two OPAC Championships. The men’s lacrosse team also won the conference title.
