Springfield Township boys and Upper Moreland girls were winners in Wednesday’s opening round of the District One 2A Tournament.
Boys
#7 SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP 9, #10 POPE JOHN PAUL II 4
The Spartans advanced to Saturday’s quarterfinal round, thanks to their win over PJP.
Cam Callands and Paul Richardson both scored a pair of goals. Contributing one goal each were Zach Coppol, George Baughan, Nick deQuevedo, Will Kaufmann and Wilson Krewson.
Goalie Paul Asman recorded seven saves.
Springfield Township (13-5, 4-5 SOL) will travel to second-seeded West Chester Henderson for a quarterfinal game on Saturday.
Girls
#7 UPPER MORELAND 22, #10 JENKINTON 7
No one on Upper Moreland’s sidelines was quite sure when the Golden Bears had last competed in districts. The only thing they knew for certain was that it had been a long, long time.
“I’m so honored to play with these girls because we pushed so hard for this year,” senior captain Mel Wittick said. “The fact that we made it to playoffs my senior year and never made it any other year just makes it a special year in general.
“It’s starting to hit that I’ll be moving on to bigger and better things, but I have great memories like this to hold onto for high school.”
The Golden Bears went into Wednesday’s game with plenty of confidence. It turns out they had a regular season win over the Drakes already under their belts (13-6).
“We killed it in that game as well,” Wittick said. “We knew their strengths, we knew what to do in order to get the job done, but at the same time, Jenkintown was a better team today than they were at the beginning of the season, so we had to make sure we came in with our heads mentally prepared to win every ground ball, to win every draw control and to win everything that was set in front of us so we didn’t let up and could get the overall score we got.”
Also helping to prepare the Golden Bears was an SOL schedule filled with Class AAA schools.
“That helps so much,” Wittick said. “From playing the hard season we had, it definitely helped on days like today when we realized we had the advantage because of the fact that we worked hard in every other game possible.”
The Golden Bears took the suspense out of this one in a hurry. Freshman Meghan O’Donnell scored her first of five goals 32 seconds into the game, and the Bears were off and running. When Emma Meakim connected on her second goal of the game at the 19:13 mark, the Golden Bears led 6-0. O’Donnell, Allison Felicetti and Meakim each had a pair of goals in that run.
“Before the game, our coach reminded us that we had to come out strong and get a lead,” said O’Donnell. “I just keep reminding myself to be aggressive and go to goal and not be timid with the ball because if I do make a mistake my teammates are always there for me.”
The Golden Bears took a commanding 12-4 lead into halftime, and the mercy rule went into effect at the 18:48 mark when O’Donnell found the net in a hustle play near the crease.
“Meg doesn’t have any fear when she goes out there,” coach Kim Frantz said of her freshman midfielder. “What a lot of our freshmen do – they don’t play like freshmen.
“They’ve been very welcomed. Our team has done an awesome job of bringing together seniors, freshmen, juniors and a couple of sophomores that we have. Really, they don’t see grades anymore, which was my biggest fear coming into the season knowing we had such a large freshman class coming in. They’ve really done a nice job of meshing.”
O’Donnell and senior Sydney Bachmayer led the Golden Bears with five goals each. Meakim had four while Felicetti, Jessica Flanagan, Kaitlin Kelly and Bryanna Gordon each had two. Contributing assists were Cassidy Hirsch, O’Donnell, Felicetti and Bachmayer.
Upper Moreland (12-7, 5-4 SOL) will travel to second-seeded Gwynedd Mercy for a quarterfinal contest on Saturday.
Jenkintown 4-3 7
Upper Moreland 12-10 22
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