SCH girls finding the net in early games

Posted 9/19/16

SCH senior Jazmin Contreras heads the ball upfield away from the goal during last week's win at Abington Friends. At left is freshman Abbie Rorke, and in the background is SCH sophomore goalie Sena …

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SCH girls finding the net in early games

Posted

SCH senior Jazmin Contreras heads the ball upfield away from the goal during last week's win at Abington Friends. At left is freshman Abbie Rorke, and in the background is SCH sophomore goalie Sena Houessou-Adin. (Photo by Tom Utescher) SCH senior Jazmin Contreras heads the ball upfield away from the goal during last week's win at Abington Friends. At left is freshman Abbie Rorke, and in the background is SCH sophomore goalie Sena Houessou-Adin. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

In the last full week of non-league soccer before Inter-Ac League competition begins, the girls of Springside Chestnut Hill Academy started out with a Monday afternoon visit to Abington Friends School.

Taking a 3-0 lead in the first half, the SCH ladies went on to a 5-0 victory, sending shots into the goal posts almost as many times as they directed the ball between them.

The only thing striking at a higher rate than the Blue Devils was Abington's aggressive population of gnats, which tortured the ankles of players and onlookers alike.

Junior Emily McNesby paced the offense with two goals and two assists. The talented midfielder originally made a verbal commitment to the University of Maryland, but after that school changed coaches, McNesby decided to volunteer for the University of Tennessee.

Fellow 11th-grader Grace Rorke, who plans to play for Dartmouth, scored the game's opening goal about six minutes in, and her freshman sister, Abbie, struck just after the middle of the first half. McNesby assisted on both of those goals, then scored one herself two minutes before the intermission for the 3-0 halftime count.

As mentioned earlier, the visitors banged several balls off of the uprights as they spent much of the opening period on the attack.

This was only the second official game of the season for SCH. Led by juniors McNesby and Rorke and fellow quad-captains Taylor Ferry and Alex McHugh (both seniors), the Blue Devils had opened up on September 2 with a 6-3 victory over Archbishop Carroll.

Last Monday, Abington Friends raised its level of play in the second half and logged a good deal more ball possession than in the first 40 minutes. In the SCH goal, sophomore Sena Houessou-Adin was not able to simply cruise to a shutout; she made five saves over the course of the afternoon.

For the two previous seasons, Destini Curry started in goal most of the time for the Blue Devils, but as a senior this year she did not come out for the team. Houessou-Adin saw some action as a freshman in 2015, including a start in a win over Penn Charter.

Playing defense in front of her and helping to limit the number of quality shots for the Kangaroos were Grace Rorke and senior veteran Jazmin Conteras. Junior Lucy Lamb and sophomore Kylie Quinn also did their part to help contain the reinvigorated 'Roos.

The younger Rorke is just one of three freshmen who are starting for Springside Chestnut Hill. The others are Madison Niebish and Emily McNesby's younger sister Meghan, both new students at SCH.

A player who arrived at SCH last fall and had an impact on the soccer pitch right away is Nayah Moore. Now a sophomore, she helped dampen Abington's early enthusiasm in the second half last week by bringing the ball in from the right wing and scoring the visitors' fourth goal about eight minutes into the new period.

With 15 minutes left, Emily McNesby drove in from the left to score her second goal and tack the 5-0 final on the board.

UPDATE: Two days later, Houessou-Adin had another five saves and another 5-0 shutout. In front of a home crowd Emily McNesby fired all five goals as the Blue Devils topped St. Hubert's, a solid squad from the Catholic League North. Earning assists in the game were Grace Rorke, Niebish, and Meghan McNesby.

The Bambies had a league game coming up against Conwell Egan the following day and kept a little energy in reserve at SCH, but they still were a more challenging opponent than AFS. The previous week, Hubert's had beaten Archbishop Wood just two days before Wood took a 2-1 decision at Germantown Academy, home of the defending Pennsylvania Independent School champions.

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