SCH senior Grace Rorke (left) has her posture adjusted by GA junior Grayson Gross. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

For the girls of Germantown Academy and Springside Chestnut Hill, the first Inter-Ac League lacrosse match they played last week had not gone well. On back-to-back days, the two teams had traveled out to Episcopal Academy and each squad came home from Newtown Square contemplating an 18-3 loss.

Although the SCH players had gotten back on the winning track with a non-league romp over Westtown School on Wednesday (16-2), both the Blue Devils and the GA Patriots were eager to nail down an Inter-Ac victory when they met the following afternoon.

The weather was cold at GA on Thursday, but the competition was heated, and the teams were tied at 8-8 with under two minutes remaining in the game. Converting off of a free position for her third goal of the day, Blue Devils junior Savannah Sweitzer shot the game-winner with 1:29 on the clock. At the end, GA could not cash in on a similar opportunity, and fell, 9-8.

“We knew they were a competitive team and it would be close,” Sweitzer said afterwards. “We just wanted to win the draws and the 50/50 balls and play hard to the last whistle.”

SCH head coach Kasey Mock concurred, “We felt we were closely matched, and that’s how it turned out. We knew who their top players were - a lot of these girls play together outside of school.”

The Blue Devils, who received two goals from sophomore Maggie Pearson and six saves from Sweitzer’s twin sister, Delaney, improved to 2-4 in the Inter-Ac. The Patriots came away with a 1-4 league mark despite four goals from junior Olivia Doody, two goals from sophomore Maddie Burns (a Norwood Fontbonne Academy graduate) and nine saves from junior goalie Zoe Torrey. Previously, each team had picked up an Inter-Ac win against Baldwin School.

The sun actually made a brief appearance right at the start of Thursday’s game, but soon disappeared again. After that, bundled-up spectators braved a short rain squall, some blustery winds and even some stinging sleet.

GA spent the first few minutes on offense, foiling one SCH attempt to clear the ball down the field. Sweitzer saved two shots, the second on a drive through the middle by Burns. GA retained possession, and Doody moved through the arc from left to right and fired the ball to the spot she selected.

The Patriots were ahead with 3:27 elapsed, but over the next four minutes the visitors scored three times. The first strike came half-a-minute after GA’s opening goal, with Savannah Sweitzer coming out from the rear of the cage on the left and dumping the ball into the cage.

Continuing to attack, the Blue Devils had one shot stray wide, but on a free position Pearson capitalized with a low shot. After that, a shooting-space call led to another free-po for the Springsiders. Following Pearson’s example, junior Riley Redpath also aimed low to put her team up 3-1 with 17:43 remaining in the first half. GA called time-out.

First-year GA head coach Mary Dean explained, “I called that early time out because we were down 3-1 and they were outhustling us on ground balls and draw controls. We went back out and turned that around; I was proud of my girls.”

GA sophomore Maddie Burns comes around the SCH crease toward goalie Delaney Sweitzer. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

Burns now scored her two goals for the day back-to-back, tying the match at 3-3 with 13:52 to go in the first period. On the second marker, she was assisted from out in the left flat by sophomore Elizabeth Van Blarcom. Known as “EVB,” Van Blarcom also proved to be a transition workhorse for GA, bringing the ball through the midfield over the course of the afternoon.

Springside Chestnut Hill responded to the challenge, with Sweitzer scoring less than a minute after GA’s equalizer and with freshman Brooke Prochniak making it 5-3 with 10:18 left in the half. Just 32 seconds later Germantown was back within one thanks to freshman Mackenzie Smith, and less than a minute-and-a-half after that Pearson answered for the visiting side.

The score remained 6-4 for some time, then with 1:18 remaining in the half Doody made it a one-goal affair by netting GA’s fifth goal. The Patriots had a chance to tie right at the end, but their final shot was off-target.

At halftime, GA’s Dean related, “I said it was going to come down to ground balls and draw controls. Both teams scored most of their goals after winning the draw.”

Mock emphasized to her team “We wanted to be disciplined on our ride. On offense, we wanted to be composed, but still play with a sense of urgency.”

The Blue Devils regained a two-goal advantage when senior Grace Rorke scored in the second minute of the new half. About eight-and-a-half minutes in, Patriots junior Cammy Korman dodged through the left side of the arc to close the score up to 7-6.

As the clock dropped below 10 minutes to play, SCH put too much power behind a promising bounce shot and the ball bounded over the cage. The Blue Devils maintained possession, but turned the ball over soon after that. Germantown’s Doody shot from in front of the cage to level the score at 7-7 with 8:20 left in the game.

A minute later the visitors were leading again thanks to a free position shot by junior Catie Brook. Next, a stretch of offense for the Patriots ended with a shot by Doody from the midst of a crowd in the arc. The shot was blocked, but for an instant nobody could locate the ball. It hit the ground with a spin on it, and rolled into the SCH goal.

The teams were tied once more, now at 8-8 with 5:42 remaining. About a minute after that a yellow card had the Patriots operating one player short. They survived this penalty, as Torrey saved a free position shot by Prochniak, and a quick-stick by Sweitzer missed the cage.

GA was back to full strength, but the visitors had the ball up on offense, and eventually Sweitzer was awarded a free position in the middle.

She recounted, “Their goalie was good on low shots, so I faked low and shot high, and it ended up working out. There were a lot of sticks in there, and I just tried to avoid them. I dodged the first defender and tucked under and then finished high.”

The game-winner was in the books with 1:29 on the clock.

After Sweitzer scored, she won the subsequent draw, and the Blue Devils headed up on offense to try and run out the clock. They ended up restricting their own maneuvering space by having no one positioned down in a wide open right corner. This compressed the action into the middle and the left side of the attack area, and eventually GA’s tallest player, junior Charlotte Rapp, snagged the ball out of the air on a Blue Devil pass.

There was still more than half-a-minute to go. The Patriots looked for an opening, had one shot saved by Delaney Sweitzer, and then had a free position on the center-right hash mark awarded to Burns with 8.8 seconds remaining.

As she stepped in to shoot, the defense blocked the ball coming out of her stick. The GA sideline felt there was a foul here, but there was no whistle. The Patriots chased down the ball behind the cage and were given possession there for a restart, but now there were only five seconds to go (time was put back on the clock) and Germantown could not get off another shot.

While Agnes Irwin and Episcopal are on their own level atop the Inter-Ac (Irwin edged EA, 12-11, in their first meeting), there’s a scramble for the middle ground going on between the other five teams. Penn Charter defeated both SCH and GA and then upset Notre Dame (the third-place team in 2017), but the Quakers lost to Baldwin last Tuesday.

“It shows you anything’s possible,” said the Blue Devils’ Mock, “so you just have to come to play every single game.”