Patriots players like freshman Katie Hackley (left) and sophomore Mackenzie Pluck danced during Saturday’s game, right after the game, and later on at a semi-formal affair back at Germantown Academy. (Photo by Tom Utescher)[/caption]

by Tom Utescher

In the 2014 Pennsylvania Independent Schools girls soccer championship game, the goal that defeated Germantown Academy was scored by a Penn Charter freshman who would later transfer to New Jersey’s Pennington School. Last Saturday, in this year’s PAIS final, a player who transferred into GA from Pennington scored the goal that netted the Patriots the 2015 title.

Sophomore Annie Peterson put away the lone goal of the game with three minutes and 11 seconds remaining, capping off a feisty battle under the lights that featured many scoring opportunities for both top-seeded GA and the third-seeded Churchwomen of Episcopal Academy.

With a championship medal around her neck following last weekend’s big win, Peterson was understandably pleased with her choice to attend Germantown Academy.

“I love it so far – it’s a real community,” commented the lanky 10th-grader, who is friends with Frenchy Pellerito, the former Penn Charter player who would cross the Delaware River in the other direction. She was also very familiar with the venue for last Saturday’s PAIS title match; The Proving Grounds outside of Conshohocken are the home fields for her club soccer team, Continenal FC Delco.

Penn Charter had been the two-time defending champion of both the Inter-Ac League and the Indy Schools organization. In the PAIS final last fall, the Quakers went ahead of the GA Patriots, 2-1, on Pellerito’s marker and then added a late goal for a 3-1 victory. PC no longer had the young striker this year, and when high-scoring Maryland recruit Jlon Flippens was sidelined with a season-ending injury, Charter struggled.

This appeared to open the door to the Inter-Ac championship for a deep and talented GA squad, but a reconstituted Episcopal team won a pair of 3-2 contests against the Patriots, claiming the league title with a record of 10-1-1. The Churchwomen were piloted by a new skipper, Ben Wilson, a former Division III college coach at Moravian and Susquehanna.

Germantown finished second in the Inter-Ac with a 9-2-1 mark in the standard double-round of league games. Going down the standings, third-place Agnes Irwin (7-5) was followed by Penn Charter (4-6-2), Baldwin School (3-7-2), Academy of Notre Dame (3-9-0), and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy (2-8-2).

The somewhat disappointing runner-up finish in the Inter-Ac made the PAIS tourney take on a greater importance for the Pats, especially for seniors like tri-captains Sophie Axenroth, Emmy Dolaway, and Kat Stambaugh.

Stambaugh, a third-year starter in goal, remarked after the final, “I think the fact that the score was 0-0 for almost the entire game tonight was good for us, because in our other games Episcopal scored first [EA had 2-0 leads both times] and we always had to chase them.’

Axenroth, a defender who will continue her soccer career at Cornell University, explained that from the pre-season on, the Patriots had two major goals.

“We wanted the Inter-Ac and we didn’t get that, so we were really determined to win this tournament,” she said.

“The girls absolutely refocused themselves and they played some of their best soccer of the season in these last three games,” stated fifth-year GA head coach Chris Nelson.

After they’d finally conquered Episcopal, high-scoring midfielder Dolaway said, “There was not a chance that we were going to lose to them a third time. I think it literally comes down to heart and who wants it more.”

The GA girls had also realized they’d have to play better technically and tactically against EA the third time around. They’d been surprised by the Churchwomen in the first regular-season meeting, and the league rematch came just five days after beloved GA senior Bobby Taggart succumbed to bone cancer. GA athletes wore “BT” patches the rest of the season.

“We weren’t in the right mindset with everything that was going on,” Axenroth explained, “but we got past that and it all came together. We have a lot of very talented young players, and they deserve a lot of credit for the way they matured as the season went along. They came up big for us.”

Nelson said, “I think in both regular-season games we gave Episcopal opportunities that were just too easy for a talented offensive bunch like that. We didn’t keep track of everyone and we didn’t always mark well. We knew this time we needed to defend them all over the field all the time.”

Both GA and Episcopal had received byes in the first round of the Indy Schools tournament. The Patriots then advanced with victories over SCH (5-1 in the quarterfinals) and Westtown School (3-1 in the semifinals), while EA moved through by beating Baldwin (4-2) and Friends Schools League champion Friends Central (1-0 in overtime).

Aside from Episcopal, Friends Central was the only team to defeat GA this fall, winning 2-0 in a regular-season match. The Patriots’ final overall record of 18-3-3 reflected ties against Little Flower, Lansdale Catholic, and Penn Charter (2-2 on GA-PC Day).

Everything about the final game indicated it would be a tooth-and-nail tussle. EA owned the two close wins over the Pats, but in non-league bouts against Pennington, GA won by one goal against the Raiders, and EA lost by one.

In addition to the setback against Pennington, the Churchwomen came into Saturday’s PAIS title bout with regular-season losses to Lawrenceville School, Friends Central, and Inter-Ac rival Agnes Irwin. EA would finish 15-5-2 overall, having reached deadlocks with Springside Chestnut Hill and Garnet Valley High School.

The regular starting goalie for Episcopal, 10th-grader Morgan Messner, missed Saturday’s match; she was attending an elite club tournament in Florida that had been scheduled long before the PAIS association got its plans in place. However, Coach Wilson explained that there’s really not much to choose between his normal starter and fellow sophomore keeper Hannah Moriarty.

In addition, the Churchwomen had one starting field player (junior Lily Shaner) and one of their primary reserves sidelined by injury.

The tournament organizers hadn’t settled on the site for the finals until the day before the match, and a last-second improvisation was exactly what it appeared to be. There were no bleachers at all for hundreds of spectators, the scoreboard wasn’t operational until the second half, and there was no one running the sidelines to retrieve out-of-bounds balls.

Fortunately, the players stepped up and generated fast-paced action sequences that took one’s mind off of these various shortcomings. EA attacked immediately and drew the first of five saves in the game from Germantown’s Stambaugh. On GA’s initial rush, an Episcopal defender reached a through-ball sent into the box and back-passed it to Moriarty just before the Patriots’ Mackenzie Pluck arrived on the scene. Pluck, a member of the junior national team player pool, has already made a verbal commitment to Duke University.

With about five minutes elapsed, the Churchwomen had junior Molly O’Brian drive an open shot over the crossbar, and soon another EA attempt was fired wide to the right.

GA defenders knew to be aware of O’Brian, who has verballed to Loyola (Md.), and senior Jess Shanahan, who will sign with La Salle.

“The key was containing their top two players,” Stambaugh said. “They’re very fast and they always know where each other are going to play the ball. They didn’t get to us today, and I give props to my defenders for doing an awesome job.”

Up on offense, Pluck took the ball down near the left endline about 10 minutes into the game, but her sharply-angled shot missed wide to the right. Through the middle of the period, Episcopal took the initiative.

Stambaugh had to make a diving save, and later GA defenders headed away two threatening serves into the box by the Churchwomen.

“They make some really dangerous runs from unexpected places in the midfield,” noted the Patriots’ Nelson, who said he decided against specifically man-marking EA’s top guns.

“If you try that and they beat you one-on-one, then they’ve got numbers up and you’re really in trouble,” he pointed out. “We were not going to stab; we were going to contain until support came and then we were going to double-team people. We didn’t do it well all the time, but we did it much better than in the first two games.

“We really wanted to be organized in the back, and Kat and Sophie were always calling out names and numbers to keep everything covered,” he went on. “I thought our right back, Kayla Seiberlich, had an amazing game, especially since Episcopal seemed to come down her side a lot. Rachael Villari [a sophomore] also played well on the left.”

The Germantown skipper observed that many times EA was slowed down in transition through the efforts out on the wings by midfielders Dolaway, junior Emily Williams, and three freshmen, Riley Axenroth, Allie Clark, and Katie Hackley.

GA freshman Allie Clark (#18) leaps in front of Episcopal’s Grace Norley. (Photo by Tom Utescher)[/caption]

“Our young players really stepped up this season,” Dolaway said. “We had a good team last year, but this year we were stronger and more skilled than any other GA team I’ve been on.”

Although Episcopal generated more scoring opportunities in the first half, GA came closest to putting a point on the board. Six minutes before halftime, a corner kick served in from the right by Sophie Axenroth created multiple chances inside. During a melee in front of the net, a shot bounced off a back and two more hit the crossbar. Following the second header into the bar (by junior Brynn Skelly), the Churchwomen finally cleared the ball away.

Episcopal had a chance to score with a minute to go. The Churchwomen hit a left-side corner kick on the ground out above the box and then drove the ball at the net. Stambaugh knocked it down near the right post and them scrambled out along the endline to gather it in.

Nelson reflected, “Episcopal had the run of play against us in the first half, but as the game wore on and it opened up a bit, I felt we got more dangerous at that point. They began to have trouble keeping track of us, instead of the other way around.”

As the second period got underway, GA earned a direct kick and a corner, and then Pluck made a rush up the right wing before being ridden off the ball by EA’s Julia Hondros. In the second 10 minutes, Episcopal cranked out shots that went high and wide of the cage, and in between these two attempts, a beautiful cross by GA’s Pluck went for naught as none of her Patriot pals were in position to reach the ball.

The Pats put back-to-back corner kicks in play with around 17 minutes to go; the ball went out off of the Churchwomen the first time, and on the second try EA keeper Moriarty slapped the airborne ball well away from the cage. Four minutes later, O’Brian got off a strong outside blast for the Churchwomen, but the shot pretty much went straight to Stambaugh, who hugged the ball.

Each team’s bench staff ginned up outrage at some of the linesmen’s offsides calls, but that’s not at all unusual in a soccer match.

On either side of the 10-minute mark, GA saw a shot by sophomore Bailey Gilmore deflected and a Pluck projectile fired from the right endline strike the outside of the goal frame on the near side. With around six minutes to go Pluck forwarded the ball past EA’s Shanahan and into the box, but the keeper, Moriarty, rushed out to beat Germantown’s Gilmore to the ball.

Within a minute’s time, Pluck was off the field for good. Colliding with a rival, she fell and her head hit on the turf, appearing to wrench her neck. Shanahan had another chance for the Churchwomen, but was not able to aim the ball past Stambaugh, who simply held her line and made the stop.

Finally, the scoreboard stalemate would be broken on Germantown’s next offensive transition sequence, as Peterson made a run ahead of the ball with Episcopal players alongside her.

She picked up the tale: “It was a great ball over the top; I think Allie Clark put it through. There were two defenders on me, but I was able to kind of touch it around and take a shot.”

The ball was not struck hard and straight on, but it had a spin on it and sort of knuckled to the right, befuddling Moriarty for an instant and beating her to the right post.

The Patriots held their lead for the last 3:11; then they were champions. As the Germantown Academy fans crossed the field to help celebrate, there were a number of overdressed dudes among them. Later that same evening, they would be squiring the players to a semiformal dance back at school. The victorious Patriots danced, and then danced again.

Nelson, the team’s head coach, was assisted by former Penn player Kelli Kaput and GA alumna Katie Martin (’08). He does not coach a winter sport, so now he’ll simply focus on his faculty role as a math teacher.

Looking back on his 2015 soccer squad, he summed up, “They were a total delight to coach.”