Patriots senior Maddie Cooper (center) battle's Notre Dame's Mary Kate Trevisan (left) for the ball. Behind Cooper is her sophomore teammate Ella Henry. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

Near the end of the first round of Inter-Ac field hockey games, Germantown Academy is positioned solidly in third place in the league with a 2-2 record. The Patriots have knocked off Springside Chestnut Hill (5-0) and Agnes Irwin (3-2), and SCH has already posted a 4-0 win over Penn Charter, the one squad that GA has yet to face (the seventh league member, Baldwin, is playing mostly against other schools' junior varsity teams).

Atop the league are two longtime powers, Episcopal Academy and defending champion Academy of Notre Dame, which edged EA, 2-1, in their first meeting this fall.

GA's Patriots were not at full strength when they fell to Episcopal, 4-1, in the league opener several weeks ago, and last Tuesday Germantown took on the top dog, Notre Dame, in a road game. GA fell behind the Irish in the first half, 3-0, before breaking up the shutout early in the second half. Notre Dame responded with two more markers for a 5-1 victory that raised its record to 4-0 in the league and 8-0-2 overall (the ties came against Catholic Academies teams Mount St. Joseph and Merion Mercy).

A week before the encounter with Notre Dame, the Patriots had faced Agnes Irwin, the school that knocked them out of the Pennsylvania Independent Schools tournament in 2016. GA jumped on top, 2-0, Irwin rallied to tie the match, and then the Pats pulled out the win as sophomore Jordan Roche assisted on a strike by Princeton-bound junior Sammy Popper, who has been playing with the U.S. Under-19 Team since she was a freshman.

GA stepped outside the Inter-Ac later that week to sink Shipley, 7-0.

At Notre Dame last Tuesday the Patriots would find a different caliber of competition. In addition, GA senior veteran Colleen Carrigan was out of action. Team co-captain along with classmate Maddie Cooper, Carrigan will be going on to Wesleyan University.

"Notre Dame is really fast and fit as a team," stated third-year GA head coach Jackie Connard. "Their speed made their counterattack really strong, and they had a lot of good opportunities."

From the defensive end, GA junior Sammy Popper sends the ball upfield for the Patriots. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

This translated into a great deal of pressure on Germantown's senior goalie, Hannah Santos. Santos, who will sign with Stanford University, responded with a season-high 29 saves.

In the first period, a pair of markers by AND junior Lauren Curran were sandwiched around a goal by senior Tina D'Anjolell. Set to sign with the University of Michigan, D'Anjollel is the defending Inter-Ac sprint champion in both the 100 and 200 meter dash.

Five minutes into the second half, GA got on the scoreboard thanks to Grace Pacitti, a sophomore midfielder out of Ancillae Assumpta Academy.

"I was so happy; that was my first goal ever for this team," Pacitti exclaimed. "I've always played back, so mid was really new to me."

The scoring play originated with a penalty corner, with the ball being directed out to Popper. She dribbled down low on the left and shot the ball across at the goal cage, and Irish keeper Katie Liebeskind got a piece of the ball.

Pacitti related, "Catherine McFadden [a fellow sophomore] kept the ball in and tipped it up to me, and I just hit it in from the stroke line."

Notre Dame came back up the pitch on attack and had a shot strike the right post of the GA cage about three minutes after Pacitti's goal. With 16:20 remaining, 10th-grader Meghan Mitchell scored for the hosts to make it 4-1, and with four minutes to go the second goal of the afternoon by D'Anjolell stamped the final score in the books.

"I was proud that our girls came out in the second half and got a goal," Coach Connard said, "but at the end of the game we weren't attacking with enough numbers, just because we were tired."

GA's goalscorer, Pacitti, has played for the Mystx Field Hockey Club since she was in fourth grade. Connard, a coach with the Philadelphia Hockey Club, said that around half of the Germantown Academy players participate in club field hockey. At several other league schools, she noted, almost everyone does.

Some of the effects of this can be seen when the Patriots run up against squads like Notre Dame.

"Their passes are stronger and more accurate than ours, and their receptions are tighter," Connard said.

The Patriots have been making progress, and currently they're on sort of an island in the middle of the Inter-Ac along with Agnes Irwin - comfortably ahead of three of the other schools, but not yet up with Notre Dame and Episcopal.