Mount St. Joseph sophomore goalie Maeve McCarthy charges out to dive on a loose ball in front of two of her defenders, Rory Williamson (left background) and Mary Kate Stefanowicz. (Photo by Chris Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

In a relatively late first meeting with Merion Mercy Academy in field hockey, Mount St. Joseph registered an important Athletic Association of Catholic Academies victory last Thursday. For their 3-1 win the Magic had to come from behind against their Main Line rival, with junior Elle Maransky matching a Merion goal in the first half, and then scoring two more times in the second period off of assists from her classmate Julianna Kratz.

"It was a really good game," Maransky said afterward. "I know a few of their girls from the W.C. Eagles because I just switched to there for my club. We knew that Merion lost some good players from last year but that they're still really strong."

On paper, the teams appeared very evenly matched, and that turned out to be the case on the artificial turf at Conshohocken's Proving Grounds in a designated "home" game for the turf-less Mount. Each team had fallen to Villa Maria for its lone loss of the season in or out of the league, and each squad had tied the top team in the Inter-Ac, The Academy of Notre Dame.

After Friday's match, the fourth of the week for the Magic, the local stickwomen owned a record of 11-1-1 overall and 9-1 in the AACA. They'd started the week with a 2-1 win over Unionville High School, receiving goals from Kratz and from Maransky's sister Megan, a freshman. The level of competition fell off in the middle of the week as the Mount easily shut out two teams dwelling deep in the Catholic Academies standings, St. Basil and Villa Joseph Marie.

Merion's Golden Bears are in their second season under head coach Margaretha Ehret, a Wyndmoor native and former Penn Charter star ('05) who signed with the University of Virginia and later transferred to Penn. Her younger sister Emilee played for the Mount and then for Penn State, where she graduated this past spring. After Friday's game, Ehret's squad was 11-2-1 overall and 7-2 in league play.

The Golden Bears attacked at the outset and the Mounties made their first rush shortly thereafter, a precursor to the back-and-forth flow of play for most of the match. Merion senior Arianna Lavelle (who will play lacrosse at Fairfield University) dribbled the ball into the left side of the circle and slanted down toward the right post to fire the first goal of the contest with four minutes and 18 seconds elapsed.

Wanting to respond quickly, the Mounties pushed up the field. The ball was sent from the right side of the circle into a scrum of players on the doorstep of the Golden Bears' den. After touches by several sticks, Georgetown recruit Maransky shot the ball in with 23:13 still remaining in the first half.

Over the next five minutes each team earned a penalty corner, but neither squad produced a shot. On a promising lifted shot by Merion near the middle of the period, Mount sophomore goalie Maeve McCarthy (three saves) came up with a big stop to keep the contest tied. Soon after that the freshman goalie for Merion, Kristin Rake (10 saves), made a difficult save of her own when MSJ ninth-grader Meghan McGinley fired from a little outside the left post.

The 1-1 tally remained unchanged through late penalty corners by each team, and the league rivals were still tied at the intermission.

Freshman Kennedy Cliggett of the Mount drives the ball past Merion Mercy's Emily Hauck (right). (Photo by Tom Utescher)

A few minutes into the second round, Megan Maransky brought the ball up the left wing and drove it from outside the circle. It was on target for the goalcage, but nobody touched the ball inside the scoring loop. Her older sister would find the netting of the MMA goal four minutes and nine seconds into the new half, lifting the ball from the right of the cage off of a pass from Kratz farther out on the same side.

Merion, which hadn't trailed up until now, was the aggressor much of the time during the next 20 minutes, keeping the Magic under pressure in real-time play and on corner restarts. This stretch of offensive activity would give the Golden Bears a 9-6 advantage in corners overall.

The Magic were able to weather the storm, though. McCarthy's efforts in goal were supported with defensive stops by senior Jax Nyzio (a Norwood Fontbonne Academy graduate) and by sophomore Rory Williamson as the clock dropped below the 10-minute mark.

Earlier, the Mount had charged upfield on one threatening counterattack. Senior Grace Wallis (who will sign with UVA) sped along the right wing and belted the ball laterally across the top of the circle, but Megan Maransky, running the opposite side, could not stop the ball.

After somehow surviving everything Merion threw at them in their own circle, the Magic began attacking consistently again with around five minutes to go, prompting a Merion time-out with 3:13 on the clock and the ball in the Bears' defensive end.

When play resumed, Merion advanced across midfield but had its progress halted by MSJ senior Mary Kate Stefanowicz (Bucknell), who took the ball away and got things going in the other direction.

Before long, Kratz was dribbling in along the left endline. She passed the ball toward the goalmouth and Elle Maranski banged it in to complete her hat trick with two minutes left to go.

During the time-out a little earlier, Maransky related that composure was emphasized in the MSJ huddle.

"At the end," she said, "it was like, just keep calm. We have a hard time staying calm at the end because it's very hectic. The main things were keeping possession and finishing on our shots."

She noted that the older players on the team have really started to mesh with the freshmen who are seeing a lot of time, including her own sister, Meghan McGinley and Kennedy Cliggett, who exhibited a very high work rate in midfield play against Merion.

The elder Maransky elaborated, "We've worked a lot in practice on passing combinations. We work on attacking up the sidelines and then going into the middle. We were able to incorporate a lot of that into the game today."

In terms of personal development, the junior said, "I'm mostly working on stick skills and finishing, because that's basically what the offense has to do."

In the final two minutes after Maransky's third goal, the Magic kept possession of the ball and ran out the clock. They were happy, but they knew that the game had been closer on the field than the scoreboard suggested. They also knew they'd be facing the Golden Bears again just four days later on the grass at Merion.