August 31, 2006 Issue                                       

©2006 The Chestnut Hill Local

Mount hockey works out with Emmaus, Wissahickon
by TOM UTESCHER

Mount goalie Kieran Sweeny’s superb play kept her squad competitive in a scrimmage with Emmaus. (Photo by Scott Alloway)

For the first scrimmage of the 2006 field hockey pre-season period, Mount St. Joseph Academy could hardly have devised a more rigorous challenge than the one the Magic faced at Wissahickon High School last Thursday morning. There, they took on not only the host Trojans, state semifinalists for the past three years, but also the Emmaus High School Green Hornets, the two-time defending state champions, and the team ranked number one in the nation in 2005.

At the end of last summer, the Magic had traveled to the Lehigh Valley to tackle Emmaus on its home turf, and over the course of a regulation-length practice game and a subsequent half-hour of seven-on-seven play, the Hornets pounded in 14 goals to the Mount’s one. The results were much more encouraging for the locals this time around.

The three teams played against each another for one 30-minute period in round-robin fashion, and in the first of these sessions, the Mount got by Wissahickon, 1-0, on a goal by Katie Reinprecht that was assisted by her younger sister, Julie.

Taking on Emmaus in the next segment, the Mounties found themselves under almost continuous assault for the first 15 minutes. Later, though, they took a 1-0 lead on a goal by Julie Reinprecht before the Hornets evened it up with 90 seconds to go. Later on, the Mount and Emmaus met again in 15 minutes of seven-on-seven action, and battled to a scoreless draw.

“Wissahickon and Emmaus both have [artificial] turf fields, and this was our first time on turf in the pre-season,” pointed out MSJ’s Lois Weber, who coaches the team along with Tina Reinprecht, the mother of Katie and Julie. “It’s always great to have the opportunity to play Emmaus, because when you play a team that good, it’s easy to see the areas that you have to work on. The main areas for improvement we saw today were our speed, our agility, the speed of our passing, and our movement off-the-ball.”

Reinprecht said, “We talked about working together more on defense and creating pressure situations so we slow them down a little bit. We don’t want to over-commit so that they can eliminate a line [of players] with one pass. What you don’t want is for individuals to try to create a turnover at midfield, because it’s never going to happen against a team like that.”

Of the three teams on hand, Wissahickon had suffered the greatest graduation losses from last year’s squad. The Mount, which lost six seniors from 2005 but has developed good depth in its program, got the better of the Trojans, but then the Magic found themselves back on their heels in the early going against Emmaus. The Hornets have had to replace five starters from 2005, but this outfit is a juggernaut that never really needs to “rebuild,” but simply “re-load.”

“We told the kids it looked like they came out at a hundred miles-per-hour and we came out at 50,” MSJ’s Weber said.

Fortunately for the Mount, goalie Kieran Sweeney seemed to thrive on the pressure and kept the cage sealed until her team regrouped. The Hornets continued to control the ball much of the time, but the Mount was able to make a few forays up the field and take some of the heat off its defense. Late in the period, the Magic took the ball off Emmaus around midfield and the tenth-grade tandem of Julie Reinprecht and Jen Sabia went on the attack.

Reinprecht carried the ball into the circle, and as a double-team closed in she got off a shot that was saved by the keeper. A follow-up shot by Sabia was also blocked, but when the rebound came out to the left of the goal, Reinprecht was there to knock the ball back over into the right side of the cage.

Only about four minutes remained in the session, but the Mount was not able to hold its 1-0 lead, as the Hornets’ Jenna Horowski drove the ball at the MSJ goal and Brittany Hausman tipped it in.

After the 0-0 stint of seven-on-seven, the teams squared off for a round of penalty strokes, and again there was a stalemate, at 2-2. Sweeney saved three of the five Emmaus shots she faced, while Katie Reinprecht and Colleen McGowan scored for the Mount. In the sessions out on the open field, Emmaus looked like the better team, but on the scoreboard the Magic had matched the Hornets point-for-point, and even in a trial run, that’s something that very few teams can do.