GFS senior Andrea Berghella (right) leaps up to head an airborne ball away from the Tigers’ cage. Behind him is his sophomore brother, Pietro, the GFS goalie, and at left are Steven Hamel (#19) and Ray Hill-Cristol. (Photo by Tom Utescher)[/caption]

by Tom Utescher

On a Tuesday afternoon when the weather and the calendar signaled that it was time for outdoor fall sports to come to an end, Germantown Friends School’s boys soccer team wrapped up its season last week in the quarterfinal round of the Pennsylvania Independent Schools tournament.

Seeded 10th for the PAIS tourney, the Tigers trekked to the windswept prairie of the Malvern Prep playing fields, where the second-seeded Friars took a 2-0 lead in the first nine minutes.

Later on, that score would become the final tally, although GFS had some chances to break the shutout and Malvern also had opportunities to increase its advantage.

Germantown had started out in the tournament by upsetting Episcopal Academy on November 12. With that victory balanced by the loss at Malvern, the Tigers’ final overall record leveled out at 7-7-1.

GFS had gone into the season coping with the graduation loss of six seniors from the 2014 squad; that team fell just short of making the four-team Friends Schools League tournament, losing a play-in match.

As the 2015 campaign got underway, a 0-0 standoff with Springside Chestnut Hill Academy was an early indicator of one of the Tigers’ primary assets, a relatively stingy defense anchored by 6’5” sophomore goalie Pietro Berghella. Within the league, GFS lost to eventual three-time champion Shipley school by 1-0 scores both in the regular season and in the FSL tournament semifinals. The Gators had been seeded first and the Tigers fourth for the league playoffs.

“We only allowed a total of four goals in all of our league games, including playoffs,” pointed out head coach Sam McIlvain, who praised Berghella and was also quick to credit the four backs in front of him, seniors Silas Shah and Steven Hamel and juniors Jeremy Berman and Ray Hill-Cristol.

“The midfielders were also part of the reason our defense performed well,” McIlvain noted. “They were willing to put in the work to go box to box, endline toe endline. Andrea Berghella [Pietro’s brother, a senior] and A.J. Mowafi [a junior] were tireless workers for us in the middle of the park.”

The go-to player on offense was sophomore Isaac Myran.

“His physicality, his size, his speed, and his nose for the goal made him a handful to deal with,” McIlvain said. “The last part of the season he was playing hurt some of the time, but he still commanded the respect of the other teams. Before our game with Episcopal [in the first round of the PAIS tournament] he had been out all week with an injury, but he came back and got a goal and an assist.”

The seedings for the PAIS tournament are usually made a few weeks before the regular season actually ends, and this year there were some interesting developments after the teams had been ranked. Malvern, which was accorded the second seed for the tourney and received a first-round bye, had 4-1 in the first round of Inter-Ac League regular-season games, but then limped to the finish with a 1-4 record in the second half.

Episcopal had been seeded seventh for the Indy Schools tournament, but as things turned out, the Churchmen actually snuck into second place in the Inter-Ac with a record of 5-3-2. Malvern, meanwhile, slipped to third with its final mark of 5-5.

The EA team that Germantown faced in the PAIS opener was now coming in as the Inter-Ac runner-up. GFS finally won the game on penalty kicks after goals by Hill-Cristol and Myran had the Tigers locked up 2-2 with the Churchmen at the end of regulation play and an overtime stint.

Last Tuesday, the Tigers ran into a Malvern club that was looking to redeem itself after its second-half slump in the Inter-Ac. The Friars attacked immediately and very aggressively, and netted the eventual game winner with two minutes and 38 seconds elapsed. A few yards inside the 18 and a little to the left, Malvern senior David Bettenhausen appeared to be boxed in by a group of GFS backs, but he managed to free himself and direct a shot into the lower right corner.

“They’re probably the best technical team that we’ve played,” remarked McIlvain, “and they had a number of guys who were very dangerous one-on-one.”

Three minutes later another Friars senior, Chris Savino, knocked a shot into the left post of the Tigers’ cage, and the Chester County club remained on the attack. A corner kick from the right did not lead directly to a shot, but GFS could not clear the ball out of the offensive third entirely. Savino sent it back across the goal from the right, and junior Billy Coyle punched it in from a few steps outside the left post with 31:22 still remaining in the first half.

“We’d talked about keeping a clean sheet for the first 20 minutes, so it was pretty disappointing to go down by two that early,” McIlvain said.

Up on offense, GFS booted a ball in along the right endline. It might have caused some trouble inside had it not strayed into the outside of the net panel on the near side of the goal. Later, a serve into the box appeared to spin to a standstill between two Tigers about 15 feet apart, and Cullen Pina of the Friars darted in between them to clear the ball away.

Tigers junior A.J. Mowafi (right) looks for a teammate upfield as Malvern’s Christian D’Ascenzo approaches. (Photo by Tom Utescher)[/caption]

Malvern’s Bettenhausen threatened several times late in the half. On one shot he only struck the ball a glancing blow and Berghella made a routine save, and on another play the Friars senior was not quite able to get his head on a nice serve toward the goal mouth. It was still 2-0 at the interlude.

The second half, like the first, began with 10 minutes of Malvern dominance, but the hosts could not add to their lead. The Tigers survived a corner kick and then a close-range but off-balance shot, and nine minutes in, Malvern’s Coyle closed in on a long serve and then fired into the GFS crossbar.

With 15 minutes gone, Germantown’s Myran made a dramatic charge down the right wing, but it ended with a straightforward, soft shot that was easy pickings for the Friars’ sophomore goalkeeper, Jake Hodlofski. Another sideline surge by Myran produced a good cross by the sophomore, and in front of the goal Andrea Berghella could not quite make contact with his cranium. Yet another flank attack by Myran yielded a shot over the crossbar.

Malvern had a number of offensive chances, too, but GFS was able to keep it a two-goal game as Berman, in particular, gave a strong performance in the back. GFS played hard until the end; in the final minute senior Felipe Sanz made a run up the middle, and when the ball got a little too far ahead of him a Friars defender banished it from the box.

“It was nice to see us have more fight in the second half,” McIlvain said. “We generated some opportunities, and had we been a little more precise in the front third we might have been able to claw our way back into it.”

Four seniors will be moving on from GFS and probably from organized soccer. The elder Berghella is a sought-after rower, Sanz and Shah are longtime squash players, and Hamel’s first love is ice hockey.

One of the more encouraging aspects of the season, McIlvaine said, was that “we had games like the tie with SCH and the win in the tournament against Episcopal that were games that we probably would’ve lost last year. We would’ve had a letdown somewhere along the line. This year’s group was competitive and they believed in themselves. They worked for each other and the success they had was success as a team.”

The Tigers have a lot of impact players returning, including two of this year’s freshmen, Seve Reitano and Sam Webber.

“They played with a lot of composure,” McIlvain remarked. “They’ve both played a lot of club soccer, so while they were freshmen, they weren’t green freshmen.”

The GFS skipper also pointed out that a number of talented players will be coming up from this year’s junior varsity team, and from the middle school ranks, as well.