Xavier senior Nicole Hook fractured her nose when she collided with another player's head in Saturday's 6A state final againts Perry. She had to exit the game and get her nose plugged to prevent the bleeding before coming back in.

She returned in style.

Late in the second half Abby Hubbard lined up for a corner kick. The game, scoreless at that point, featured swarming defense from both sides. Hubbard delivered the kick to Hook, who headed the ball to the back of the net with 22.32 minutes remaining.

Hook's header gave No. 1 Xavier a 1-0 victory over No. 2 Perry at Campo Verde High School in Gilbert to capture its 10th state championship in school history.

"I just saw the ball, it was a perfect kick from Abby and it just came to me so I had to finish it,” Hook said.”I really don’t have any words for this moment, it's amazing.”

Xavier head coach Barb Chura was concern about Hook's injury.

“That was a little bit of a worry moment for me because she anchors our back line with Jocelyn,” Chura said.”You got one of your best players in the back, big tall girl, she’s dominant and she’s out for 10-15 minutes.

“It's a testament to their hard work and we have a lot of players on that team. We lost seven starters, seven seniors last year and we comeback we have four returning players and then we filled in the other holes with really freshmen and sophomores and to do what they’ve done it's nothing short of remarkable.”

Perry'scoring opportunities in both halves were stopped by the stellar performance of senior goalkeeper Kinsey Ehmann. Ehmann made saves all over the net. Ehmann along with the Gator defense didn’t give up a goal throughout the state tournament.  

“I had one thing in mind and that’s winning,” Ehmann said. “I just wanted to do it for the team and not letting any goals in and I knew if I did it we would have a great chance of winning so I was thinking just save the ball and keep it out of the net the whole time.”

This is the Gators second consecutive state championship along with their fifth in 10 years.

“It was such a great feeling to finally see everything we’ve done throughout the season finally completed,” Ehmann said  “All the hard work had finally paid off and just coming together as a team at the end was so great.”