CB West earned a spot in the PIAA Class AAA championship game in Hershey on Saturday, thanks to Tuesday night’s 2-0 win over Elizabethtown.
HAMBURG – The snapshots of this night will be filed in their memories for a lifetime.
The countdown of the game’s final seconds and the mad dash onto the field in the direction of senior keeper Grace Bendon, who disappeared in a dog pile of jubilant players. The giddy excitement as coach Chris Shank tossed Hershey’s chocolate to the players. Dancing and singing along with Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas” – their team’s song – as something close to an impromptu party broke out. And then the pure joy as the realization began to sink in that their Central Bucks West squad – seeded 13th entering the district tournament – had just earned a trip to Hershey to compete in Saturday’s PIAA Class AAA title game, thanks to Tuesday night’s exhilarating 2-0 win over Elizabethtown at Hamburg High School.
“It’s honestly surreal,” Bendon said. “This is the furthest any of the seniors have ever been.”
“From the beginning of the season, this is what we wanted,” senior Holly Pyles said. “We said we were going to get tattoos when we went to states, and it’s looking like a possibility.
“Especially being seniors, it’s so special for us to get this far.”
The Bucks will be playing for their program’s eighth state title on Saturday – their first since soccer was moved to the fall.
On Tuesday night, they effectively silenced an Elizabethtown squad that had scored nine goals in its two preceding state playoff games, and the Bucks served early notice that this could be their night when Shae McCarty turned a lead pass from sophomore Mary Kate Vinkler into a goal just 10 minutes into the contest.
“It was very important that we scored early just to set the tone and to give us something to build off of,” Pyles said.
“It relieved the pressure a little bit from the defense,” Bendon added. “That’s always good.”
The Bucks’ defense was impenetrable, and Bendon stopped the only three shots she faced.
“We were able to do a good bit of scouting, and we noticed they were very technical, and they liked to penetrate through the middle,” coach Jorge Rodriguez said. “The nine goals they had in the past two games came through a lot of through balls in the center. We have a really solid core group in our middle with Allie Walsh, Mackenzie Carroll, Sophie McKnight, and today Holly Pyles who I thought was an absolute stud.”
“We knew this was a good team,” Pyles said. “In their past two games, there have been nine shots and nine goals – all the shots they’ve taken have been goals, so we knew we had to crack down on our defense and just get organized and make sure we didn’t give up any goals, and that’s what we did tonight.”
The Bucks took that 1-0 lead into halftime and all but sealed the Lady Bears’ fate when – in the 60th minute – McCarty turned a Bendon free kick from near midfield into a goal and a 2-0 advantage. The Lady Bears never seriously threatened, and the shutout win was in the books.
“Honestly, high school coaches always talk about what the important components are, the pieces that you need to have to have a championship team,” Rodriguez said. “Defense always wins championships, but you also have to have a goal scorer.
“When you have somebody like Grace (Bendon) and somebody like Shae (McCarty) on opposite ends, it kind of allows for any coach to dream big and set the goals pretty high up. We struggled all year. Six losses is not something that every coach wants to deal with, but we put it together when it counts. I think the school has had a history of doing that way, way before I got here.”
As his team headed for the bus and the trip home, Rodriguez – by this time a lonely figure on the now deserted field – patiently fielded questions from a flock of reporters. His most revealing answer came when asked what was at the core of his team’s turnaround after a third place finish in SOL Continental Conference play.
“It’s the 13 seniors,” the Bucks’ coach said. “That’s absolutely it.”
Rodriguez went on to tell of a team meeting after the Bucks’ early season 0-0 tie with Quakertown.
“I just thought the team was not clicking,” he said. “I was actually very concerned with how we were treating each other.
“We have one of our leadership captains in Maddy Shaw, and she told us a story about her being six years old watching CB West winning one of their (state) championships on TV. She’s crying telling us this whole thing.
“I think we all realized that’s how bad everybody wanted it. When you look at the other 12 seniors, they’ve been together a long time, and when you coach high school for as long as we’ve been doing it, I think the chemistry within the team is extremely important, especially when it comes to games like this where anything can happen.”
According to the players, the coming together process was ongoing.
“Halfway through the season, we had this big talk about what we wanted as a team, what we wanted to accomplish,” Pyles said.
“I think it built up towards the end,” Vinkler added. “We came together and got closer.
“Me only being a sophomore and going through it with all these seniors – it’s amazing. We’re very close, we’re a family.”
And it is that family feeling, according to Bendon, that has made it happen for the Bucks.
“Before the seniors were always separate,” Bendon said. “This year we all love each other, we all hang out.”
“We just want to play for each other,” Pyles said.
They will have one more opportunity to do just that when the Bucks (19-6-1) face District 7 runner-up Canon McMillan on the biggest stage in Saturday’s title game (4 p.m.). The Macs put to rest the idea of an all-Central Bucks State final with their 2-1 win over Central Bucks East.
Elizabethtown 0-0 0
Central Bucks West 1-1 2
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