PC's O'Donnell, Shoemaker sink SCH field hockey

Posted 10/29/12

Penn Charter’s Anna Wills (foreground) and fellow senior Taylor Wrubel wrangled frequently over the ball in PC’s win over Springside Chestnut Hill last week. (Photo by Tom Utescher)[/caption] by …

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PC's O'Donnell, Shoemaker sink SCH field hockey

Posted

Penn Charter’s Anna Wills (foreground) and fellow senior Taylor Wrubel wrangled frequently over the ball in PC’s win over Springside Chestnut Hill last week. (Photo by Tom Utescher)[/caption]

by Tom Utescher

Because they thought that a field hockey official wrongly nullified an apparent goal the first time they played Penn Charter back in September, the Springside Chestnut Hill Academy Lions felt that PC’s winning score of 4-1 was one point off.

SCH got its two-goal final margin last Tuesday in its rematch with the Quakers, but once again it was PC that came out on top, winning 3-1 this time thanks to a pair of markers by senior Katherine O’Donnell and one by sophomore Avery Shoemaker.

The victory temporarily kept the Quakers alive in the quest for third place in the Girls Inter-Ac League, but by week’s end the situation had changed. While uncatchable Episcopal and Notre Dame argued for overall supremacy (splitting in their two tilts), Charter was chasing Agnes Irwin, and head-to-head PC had a loss and a tie against the Owls.

After the SCH win, the Quakers lost 2-0 to Episcopal on Friday to end the week at 5-5-1 in the league, with one game against Germantown Academy still left to play.

Meanwhile, last Thursday Irwin recorded its second win this fall over GA for a league mark of 6-3-1, with Baldwin and then Episcopal still remaining on its schedule. The Owls beat last-place Baldwin 6-0 the first time, and a win in this week’s rematch would give Irwin a seventh Inter-Ac victory, putting the Owls out of the Quakers’ reach.

Bouncing back from Tuesday’s tilt at Charter, Springside Chestnut Hill took a 2-1 lead at GA in the second-half of a Friday contest, only to have the Patriots score once in regulation and once in overtime for a 3-2 victory. The Pats ended the week with a league record of 4-7, while SCH went home 1-10. The Lions have a rematch coming up against Baldwin, a team they defeated, 6-4, at the beginning of October.

Last Tuesday’s proceedings at Penn Charter hit a snag immediately when there were no officials on hand at game time. The schools had switched their home-away contests a few weeks earlier, but the officials’ game assigner didn’t correct the schedule. Although both the SCH and PC websites had the correct information posted, the refs who showed up at the SCH field in Chestnut Hill didn’t think to check.

The junior varsity game was started first and stretched through an overtime before the varsity contest finally got underway. The JV’s started out with a coach from each team officiating, but two regular refs arrived by the time the varsities took the field.

Not much more time went by before the host Quakers made the first mark on the scoreboard. Rushing through the midfield en masse, Charter had Shoemaker finish the play from low in the circle on the left side with 6:26 elapsed.

Just over three minutes later the hosts were up 2-0. Shoemaker started the sequence by inserting the ball from the left endline on a penalty corner. O’Donnell received it at the top of the circle, and immediately smacked the backboard with a hard drive.

With just under 16-and-a-half minutes remaining in the first half, the Lions scored what would be their lone goal of the day. In the midst of a crowd in front of the PC goalcage, SCH senior Cassie Dunne saw the ball glance off a defender and hit it in.

Dunne, a Norwood Fontbonne Academy graduate, was active in the midfield all day long for the Lions. The same held true for her classmate Taylor Wrubel, who often found herself jousting with the Quakers’ skillful Anna Wills. Wills has decided to follow her sister Liz (PC ’11) to the hockey team at Bucknell University.

Charter still led the match 2-1 at halftime, and midway through the second period O’Donnell deposited her second goal of the afternoon to reinforce the Quakers’ position.

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