While the Abington girls’ lacrosse team saw its season come to an end, the Central Bucks East boys’ squad fell in overtime in a battle for third place.
Boys
#2 GARNET VALLEY 12, #5 CENTRAL BUCKS EAST 11 (OT)
It was another roller coaster ride for Central Bucks East in Thursday’s District One 3A third place game. The Patriots, who trailed 7-3 at halftime, found themselves on the short end of a 10-5 scored heading into the final quarter when they reeled off six straight goals to go on top 11-10 only to watch the Jaguars knot the score. Garnet Valley won it in overtime.
The loss overshadowed the glittering six-goal effort of senior Ryan Brown. Ryan Stout added one goal and three assists, and Michael Ott had one goal and two assists. Adding one goal and one assist each were Ryan Schmidt, Alec Bracken and Ryan Bullotta.
Ott won 16 of 26 face-offs, and East goalie Liam Rosenthal was credited with 12 saves.
Ott also scooped up a team-high nine ground balls while John Galow had three and Colin Stein had two. Joe Thiroway, Jake Ventresca and Liam Rosenthal had one each. Thiroway, Stout, Drew Bethke and Ott each had one caused turnover.
Central Bucks East (16-5, 9-0 SOL) will take on District 11 champion Parkland in the opening round of the PIAA 3A Tournament on Tuesday.
Central Bucks East 2-1-2-6-0 11
Garnet Valley 3-4-3-0-1 12
Girls
#5 WEST CHESTER RUSTIN 9, #7 ABINGTON 8
The Ghosts closed out their successful season on a disappointing note, just missing out on a berth to the state tournament with a heartbreaking loss to the Golden Knights in the District One 3A seventh place game.
“We haven’t been playing that great down the stretch, and it showed,” coach Amanda Kammes said. “It’s unfortunate because this group has earned the right, in my opinion, to be a part of the state tournament and fell short.”
The Ghosts got off to a slow start, falling behind 3-0, but three straight goals by Sam McGee, who finished with a game-high four goals, knotted the score midway through the first half. The run continued with back-to-back goals by Cathy Staerk (Jules Greco assist) and Greco to give the Ghosts a 5-3 lead, but the Golden Knights scored a pair of goals in the final minutes of the half to knot the score 5-5 at the intermission.
“It came down to the draw,” McGee said. “They got the first step on us a few times, and also, we got some moving on the draw calls, and we rarely see that.”
Lindsay Baer turned a ground ball near the crease into a goal, and when McGee scored on a no-doubt-about-it shot on a free position, the Ghosts led 7-5. A turnover in the Ghosts’ defensive end resulted in a goal for the Golden Knights, but Casey McCallister scored on a free position to put the Ghosts on top 8-6 with 11:51 remaining.
Not a whole lot of good things happened after that for the Ghosts. The Knights scored a pair of free position goals to knot the score 8-8 with 7:40 remaining, and when freshman Jessica Ciarrocchi found the net with 5:04 remaining, the Golden Knights had their first lead since early in the opening half. This time they didn’t relinquish it, and a successful season had come to a disappointing end for the Ghosts.
“It’s just sad,” McGee said. “If one thing had gone differently, if we got one more 50-50 ball, it could be tied at the end of the game and gone into overtime instead of losing by one.”
The Ghosts, according to Kammes, allowed a golden opportunity slip away.
“We are the superior team,” she said. “I don’t really care what the score says. I’m not trying to be disrespectful to them. We were both battling for the seventh seed.
“However, we beat ourselves. Plain and simple. There’s no other way to put it. Person for person we have four, five D1 kids, a handful of high D3 kids all going to play lacrosse next year in college, a really special senior group that has really grinded it out to change the program.
“All you can hope if the young kids on our team learned something, and this is part of our culture and this becomes more of a regular thing. ‘Stoga (Conestoga), Garnet Valley – you could go down the list. Anyone in Delaware County – they’re used to playing into June. That’s what they do. This is still a little fish out of water for these guys. We’re usually done at this time.”
“Even the possibility of states two or three years ago, we were trying to just win our league then,” McGee said. “It (stinks) because we all really bought into it, and we came out here and had a pumped bus ride.
“We were talking about it in school, texting each other. We were scouting Rustin. We were all really excited for this game. It’s hard.”
Abington (9-0 SOL) closed out its season with a 15-7 record.
Abington 5-3 8
West Chester Rustin 5-4 9
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