Central Bucks East captured the District 1 4A title with a win over Lower Merion. Andrew Robinson recaps all the action. Photos courtesy of Tracy Valko. CLICK HERE to view Suburban One Sports’ GIRLS’ SOCCER GALLERIES. Check back for a gallery of photos.
District 1 4A final
#1 Central Bucks East 2, #8 Lower Merion 1
What’s in a name?
For a quartet of sophomores at CB East, it’s a legacy they try to live up to while making their names their own.
Two years ago, Mia Forney, Ava Mignon and twins Ella and Taylor Roumy watched their older sisters – Eliot Forney, Sofia Mignon and Brooke Roumy – play for a District 1 championship. The older sisters came up a goal short of a trophy in 2022 but had left the program in a strong place for their younger sisters to step into.
If the winners’ medals hanging around Mia, Ava, Ella and Taylor’s necks on Saturday weren’t enough of an indicator, those names are still at the foundation of what the team is doing.
“Ava and I were talking about this before we played today, it’s crazy how we came to all these games two years ago and now we’re here and playing in it,” Mia Forney said. “It’s such a full circle moment. We had to watch that all happen and now we’re here and we were able to finish it.”
Mia Forney, who scored the game-winner Saturday as the No. 2 seeded Patriots downed No. 8 Lower Merion 2-1 in a high-level District 1 4A final, is a second-year starter at forward and like Eliot, is a proven goal-scorer. 
Ava Mignon, who had one year playing alongside her sister Sofia and is actually a third-generation Patriot following her oldest sister Izzy, played a role off the bench last year and this year has solidified the same holding midfield spot her sisters held down.
Ella and Taylor Roumy have stepped in as first-year starters at right and left back respectively, following Brooke as defensive stalwarts while giving an entirely new East back line tenacity and some offensive production on the outsides.
“We just wanted to finish the job,” Ella Roumy said. “We wanted to keep the name going through the system and also get a win for them.”
Not surprisingly, the older sisters went from playing integral roles in CB East’s resurgence to playing at the next level. Elliot Forney is a sophomore at Rutgers, playing behind a group of attacking players that’s led by some experienced upperclassmen for the Big Ten power.
Sofia Mignon just finished her freshman season at NJIT, the midfielder having started all 17 games and netting one goal in 1399 minutes. Brooke Roumy is a sophomore at Davidson, and not counting Saturday night’s A-10 playoff game at Saint Louis, has started 34 of 35 games on the back line with two career assists.
The younger sisters are doing quite alright back home. The four, along with sophomore Kiera Sleicher, make up half of East’s starting lineup of field players, and it’s often hard to tell they’re underclassmen with the way they play seamlessly with each other and the five seniors who start in the field alongside them.
“Watching our sisters go through that and lose, it was motivation for us to win for them and get it for them,” Ava Mignon said. “We played today for them.
“My sister told me to take it all in, it’s such a good experience to be a part of, so we all wanted to play our hearts out.”
Saturday’s win returned East to the summit of District 1 for the first time since 2015. However, when Jake Nesteruk took over ahead of the 2019 season, the Patriots were coming off a year where they’d missed the postseason entirely and the program needed to be built back up.
The progress came steadily. In 2021, led by a senior class including Elise Duffy, Chloe Strawn and Courtney Curry, with Elliot Forney and Brooke Roumy playing as juniors and Sofia Mignon a sophomore, the Patriots returned to the state playoffs.
They’ve done that now four straight years, reaching the 2022 District 1 title game was another step in that lane and even as the first names in front of the Forney, Mignon and Roumy listed on the roster have changed, the expectations have not.
“It’s about keeping the standard high because we have built such a good program,” Ava Mignon said. “We want to keep ourselves up to that standard.”
Mia Forney continued.
“We want to keep it going not only for ourselves, our families and our friends, but our school,” Forney said. “We’re the only fall sport still going, so we want to keep it going, so we have something to look forward to and get support behind.”
Following in the footsteps of an older sibling who was a standout player on the same team isn’t always easy. The four sophomores haven’t tried to be exact replicas of their older sisters, even if they’re playing similar roles or positions, instead focusing on playing as the best versions of themselves.
Teammates who got to play with their older sisters knew the next wave was coming in behind them, and they’ve been impressed with the way the sophomores are making their own names for themselves.
“They got a head start with this program through their sisters, and they were able to support us through them,” senior Jessie Bernabe said. “Since then, they’ve set themselves apart and shown that each of them is their own person.”
It’s a way of keeping the last names relevant while making sure their first names are just well known.
“That’s such a big part of it, even though our sisters came through and made something of themselves, we’re doing the same thing and not necessarily following in their shadows,” Mia Forney said. “We’re able to walk with them.”
“We can continue what they did,” Ava Mignon added. “In my opinion, that’s the way to follow in their footsteps, by keeping up that high standard.”
Ella and Taylor Roumy are a little quieter, but their play has done plenty of talking this season. The twins attribute their ability to step into important roles as simply following a really good example that was set in front of them.
“Brooke is such a mentor, I really look up to her, especially playing the same position,” Ella Roumy said. “I want to do what she’s doing and be where she is.”
“I tried to work for my spot on the field,” Taylor Roumy said. “I think both of us have done that this year.”
Patriots coach Jake Nesteruk noted each team is its own entity and just because one group did well one year, doesn’t mean it’s a given the same thing happens the next season. So while Elliot Forney, Brooke Roumy and Sofia Mignon’s teams had their successes, the teams that have Mia Forney, Ava Mignon and Ella and Taylor Roumy on them are going to do things differently.
“Those kids who have had siblings go through the program, they know the standard but the kids that showed up and wore the jerseys today have done such a good job day in and day out on their own,” Nesteruk said. “The quality of soccer they put out, the ability to grind out tight games, they haven’t wobbled, it’s happened very rarely this entire season and when they have, they’ve responded right away.”
So, what’s in a name? At CB East, it’s an understanding that it doesn’t matter what someone’s first or last name is, if they’re on the field, the expectation is the same no matter what.
“The friendship we have is what keeps us together,” Ava Mignon said. “We’re such a close group, and it shows on the soccer field. We’re always so connected, and we click very well.”
“It’s such a mental thing, even with us being sophomores, if our mentality is down, the team’s mentality can still get dragged down,” Mia Forney continued. “That’s another thing with everyone being so close, if one person is down, then everyone is down so it’s something we try to avoid. As long as someone is up, we can keep the energy up, we just need that one person pushing and it’s always someone different.”
Smash and Crash
Mia Forney and Kiera Sleicher are pretty fearless soccer players.
They’ll do the work the entire length of the pitch, they get stuck in on tackles, and technically, they’re very sound. The two sophomores are also very good at contributing to goals, whether it’s setting them up or scoring and Saturday it was the latter.
A dazzling long range goal from Sleicher and a hustle play from Forney that turned into a pretty quality finish of its own by Forney helped East to its first district title in nine years.
Not that their teammates were too surprised.
“Our goals were from Kiera and Mia today and just their giving 100 percent to every game and their effort in every practice or every game not only helps them, but also this team,” keeper Mae Leedy said.
Lower Merion goalkeeper Cate Cantu is a terrific player, the junior announced her commitment to Louisville earlier this year, so the Patriots knew they wouldn’t beat her easily. However, they did see one area worth challenging,and thanks to some ambition and one really well-struck ball by Sleicher, it paid off.
Ava Mignon won the ball in the middle, played it back to Taylor Roumy for a long ball up the field that took a deflection with Mia Forney flying in to keep it rolling up to senior Madelyn Hill. Hill then placed a short pass in Sleicher’s path, the sophomore lining it up to take a crack off her left foot from 30 yards out.
“Jake told us their goalie liked to play off her line a little bit so if we could, let’s try to test the long shot, so in the moment, I thought, ‘alright, I’m going to hit this,’” Sleicher said. “She wasn’t too far out, but I think I just chipped it the perfect amount over her to have it go in.”
Five minutes later, it was Stella Genin doing the work on the left side as the senior pursued a ball flirting with the touchline, kept it in play and whipped a cross back across the box. That was an invite for Forney to crash in, the sophomore playing the ball on a bounce off her chest then tracking the pop-up into the six and putting a one-touch volley off her right leg into the goal.
“It’s what you come out here to do. In the position I’m in, it’s what you’re looking for, a cross in then being able to take it off the chest and volley it in, you don’t even think about it, you can’t repeat it perfectly because it’s always different,” Forney said. “It’s still something I expect, and I have to expect to finish, so I’m glad I got my foot on it today.”
CB East wouldn’t score again, but not for lack of trying. Cantu denied Sleciher a second with a terrific leaping save in the second half, and Hill came a few inches wide of sticking away a third later in the half.
Even when Lower Merion clipped the lead to 2-1 with 6:07 left on a Casey Forman PK, the Patriots maintained their level and didn’t get caught up in a panicky finish, instead seeing out the final minutes to claim their title.
“Once we got that first goal it helped us get going a little more, we gained a little more of the possession and calmed down a little bit, which is always good,” Sleicher said. “We started gaining momentum there and kind of kept it going.”
Converging Paths
As freshmen, CB East’s Class of 2025 was part of something special.
That group went undefeated as a JV team, laying the groundwork for a class that would end up as the backbone of this year’s district champions. However, it wasn’t a linear track from unbeaten freshmen JVs to lifting a trophy as seniors.
Each senior took their own way the last two years before those paths converged this fall.
“It’s been a fun ride,” senior goalkeeper Mae Leedy said. “I love seeing this team grow, and I love seeing this team adapt and change. This year, this team has been really close and we have a lot of good talent on this team. We’re always focused, and we always have our heads in the game, it’s been great to be part of it.”
Leedy, a co-captain, again played the full match in goal with junior keeper Arralyn Patterson – also a co-captain – out injured. Leedy and Patterson have split the bill in goal the last three years, both of them very capable between the posts.
Senior Jessie Bernabe, another of the team’s co-captains, has been a contributor on the varsity roster the last three years. The midfielder, who has committed to the University of Buffalo, knows her path was different than classmates like Stella Genin or Madelyn Hill who may have played lesser roles in years past or Sydney Ralph and Savannah Hayes, who barely played varsity at all before taking on starting positions as seniors.
No matter what route they took, all the team’s seniors came back together with high expectations this year.
“Coming from a freshman year where we all played together into sophomore or junior year where that differed and we didn’t have that connection, senior year has been really special,” Bernabe said. “It brought freshman year back in a sense because we had such a successful year going undefeated on JV, so it’s been amazing to bring all these connections back while playing together again.”
Mikayla Gray, the fourth co-captain, and Joey Williams round out the eight-player senior class.
As a team that starts five sophomores, the Patriots rely on the seniors on and off the field, which their underclassmen teammates recognize.
“We have good leaders through all the seniors who helped us grow our confidence and made it easier to play with each other,” sophomore Kiera Sleicher said. “Without them, we would not be as confident as we are. Having each other, I think we play bigger and older than what we are.”
East coach Jake Nesteruk has a special appreciation for this senior group, given their role in bridging the progress and growth over the last six years, but especially the last four that included the extended postseason runs.
Even the seniors who are getting their first real opportunities have measured up to those who have been mainstays, and their team-oriented mentality reflects in the group’s play between the lines.
“They do such a good job of holding up the values we always talk about, this is such a player-led program that I try to get out of the way as much as I can,” Nesteruk said. “Soccer-wise, they just make really, really good decisions. They care so much about what they do on the field and how it looks, it’s a blessing to watch from the sidelines.”
Two years ago, some of them were on the field and some of them were on the sideline, but the loss to Neshaminy in the district final stung all the same. A year ago, it was a similar feeling losing to Lower Merion in the district quarterfinals, leaving the Patriots to earn their way to states the hard way through playbacks.
Saturday, the seniors knew what was on the line.
“Coming back here, it’s a different energy,” Leedy, a senior goalkeeper, said. “You have that need, that want to win. We lost the last time we played here so that feeling of coming back and having redemption coming back after losing two years ago then losing to this team a year ago that kicked us out of playing for a district title, we felt it.”
It’s not often a team has a chance to amend not one, but two results at once. This group didn’t miss its chance.
“It was redemption for us,” Bernabe said. “We focused on this game only, not states next week or anything else, just this game and we’d let it go from there.”
Up next: CB East will host Central York, District 3’s third-place finisher, in the opening round of the PIAA 4A tournament on Tuesday.
CB EAST 2 0 – 2
LOWER MERION 0 1 – 1
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