Bella Naples stood on Chanhassen’s turf soccer field, fielding questions related to her senior season with the Storm. Nearby, head coach Katie Clark wheeled past with a wagon overflowing with soccer balls and cones. The gear was still damp from the prior night’s rainy loss in the Storm’s second-ever section championship game.

Naples pointed to Clark and proudly noted that she had been nominated for Class 3A Coach of the Year. Clark smiled and one-upped Naples with an even more exciting update — “I won” — to which Naples let out an joyful shout.

Naples is a winner, too. For her 2025 achievements, she’s Strib Varsity’s All-Minnesota Player of the Year in girls soccer.

Clark has been able to game-plan around Naples’ offensive firepower for a while now. She began coaching the Gophers commit in under-13 soccer at CC United, Carver County’s youth club. She knew Naples as the third of four soccer-playing sisters.

“I only heard of her and heard that she wanted to play both D-I basketball and soccer,” Clark said. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, that’s, that’s pretty crazy.’

“And then I met her.”

Since, Naples has become a Ms. Soccer finalist and a standout attacking midfielder for the Metro West Conference champions. She netted 27 goals and earned conference Player of the Year honors while helping Chanhassen tie the program high with 13 wins and reach a top-10 ranking in Class 3A.

Several opposing coaches pointed to Naples as a constant threat to manage. She can slip behind a high-pressing back line. She can rip a 45-yard rocket, like she did to tie last year’s state runner-up Edina in the regular season. She’s paid special attention to improving her first touch and her turn. She can calmly convert two penalties to beat the Hornets in sections for the first time in a decade.

“She’s got a lot of pressure [from opponents]. She’s our leading scorer for the last three years,” Clark said. “She knows that she’s got to perform every game. She’s playing against really strong competition, and she really stepped up and kind of willed the team to success.”

Naples will graduate having scored 80 goals for the Storm, taking over the brunt of Chanhassen’s offensive output from Grace Fogarty, another Gophers player whom Naples learned from as a freshman in 2022. That year, with Naples’ older sister, Claire, they also won the Metro West title.

“We’ve really come together as a team,” said Naples, who has helped Chanhassen, a smaller Class 3A school, punch above its enrollment size. “We don’t feel as much of underdogs anymore, but I feel like we definitely used to.”

This fall, Naples scored in all but two of the Storm’s regular-season games, and in that pair she added to her team-high eight assists. The only game in which she was shut out was against Prior Lake’s tough low block as the Lakers avenged a regular-season loss in the Section 2 championship game.

“They knew our speed. … They were smart,” Naples said. “They know what we do, because we’re a really fast team, and we broke lines.”

Naples is also a state-level sprinter and now plays club soccer at Minnesota Thunder Academy. When she joins the Gophers, she will be following in her dad and uncle’s footsteps; both played collegiate soccer.