Springfield Township rallied from a 1-0 deficit to defeat Phoenixville 2-1 in Wednesday’s PIAA 3A state semifinal game at Spring-Ford High School. The Spartans will face District 3 champion Hershey in Friday’s state title game.
#1-1 SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP 2, #1-2 PHOENIXVILLE 1
ROYERSFORD – It was a moment begging for a hero, and Jack Sharpe was more than happy to oblige.
The celebration for Shaun Bleeker’s go-ahead goal with 13:45 remaining in regulation had barely ended when a Phoenixville player somehow eluded goalkeeper Julian Casabon-Aznar and his volley was heading into the wide open net when – out of nowhere – Sharpe appeared and cleared the ball off the goal line.
“Play of the game, play of the game – that saved us,” junior Riley Martin said. “That’s what gave us the momentum we needed to go through and move on.”
The Spartans fought off everything the Phantoms threw at them in the game’s final minutes of Wednesday’s PIAA 3A semifinal, and they continued their magic carpet ride through the postseason with another inspired performance. On Friday, the Spartans will find themselves playing for a state title. Yes, a program that had never so much as won a league title until this fall will be playing Hershey for the PIAA 3A state crown.
“We never even won our division before,” Spartans’ coach Dan Meder said. “Springfield has won nothing. It’s just insane.
“In the years I’ve been here, I have lost in the semifinal four times, lost in the quarterfinal four times. I’ve watched it, and I’ve seen teams from our district go on and win it, so I’ve always said to all my assistant coaches – if we could just get out of our district, who knows where that could go, so we finally got out of the district, and here we are.”
It’s a lofty spot the players admit they never considered finding themselves in the final week of the season.
“Honestly, when I started my season, no,” Sharpe said when asked if he ever thought of playing for a state title. “I feel guilty now for not believing in my team, but we had never even made it to states, we hadn’t won districts. Now we’re going to the final. I don’t know – I just didn’t expect it, but now that we’re here – for the younger guys coming up, it sets a standard.”
“I’m still in shock,” Casabon said. “I never thought last year or two years ago if you would have told me my senior year I’d be in the state final, I would not believe you, but we have a great group of guys like we showed tonight. We’re just a team together, and it’s great. It’s a family.”
The Spartans are here because of game-saving plays like Sharpe’s. The senior gave his version of one of the game’s most dramatic sequences.
“Basically, I guess the ball got kicked back, and I saw my center back go for it,” Sharpe said. “Give credit to Phoenixville, they had a nice flick on it.
“I saw him go in on my goalie, and I thought, ‘Man, if this gets by, it’s a goal. I better go to the goal line and clear it.’ It doesn’t normally get by my goalie, Julian Casabon – he’s a fantastic keeper, but it got by him. I was there. I slide tackled it off the goal line. The fans went crazy, it was a lot of adrenaline. If that goal happens, they’re right back in it. It’s 2-2, and it’s a whole different game than it was.”
Perhaps no one appreciated Sharpe’s play more than the Spartans’ senior keeper.
“That was great,” Casabon said. “As I was going out to see a guy on a breakaway, it was one-on-one. He went by me, and I said, ‘uh oh,’ and then I see Jack Sharpe coming across the back to clear it out. It was phenomenal, it saved us.”
There were other defining moments in Wednesday’s state semifinal, not the least of which came with just under three minutes remaining in the first half with the Spartans – thanks to an early goal by the Phantoms – trailing 1-0. With the Phantoms pressing, Casabon and company withstood a flurry of shots.
“A 1-0 game is a lot different than a 2-0 game,” Casabon said. “Jack McKittrick made a great stop to possibly save a goal. If we go down 2-0, it’s a totally different game. We still would have fought, but it’s tough to come back 2-0. We came in at half down 1-0, and we knew we were still in the game, and if we score a goal, we can keep going with it like we did.”
Casabon’s relentless effort – which evoked shouts of ‘Brick wall, brick wall’ – lit a fire under his teammates.
“We’re down on ourselves, we’re not really feeling it, and he just keeps you in it,” Sharpe said of the Spartans’ senior goalie. “It’s the thing you need to keep going, knowing your goalie’s there, he’s working his butt off for you. If they had scored in that last little session, we could have been done, so I’m really thankful for him.”
“If it’s 2-0, heads would have been down,” Martin said. “We wouldn’t have had the momentum we had. It would not have been fun.”
Early in the second half, the Phantoms had three corner kicks but came up empty, and when the Spartans finally had one of their own, they capitalized. Sophomore Nick Hanuschchak served a ball into the box that was headed in by senior captain Peter Schmidt, and eight minutes into the second half, the Spartans had knotted the score, 1-1.
“We came out firing,” Martin said. “Peter burying a goal there, a nice header – it was just what we needed in the moment.”
With 18:10 remaining in a tie game, a Spartan player received a yellow card, and sophomore Shaun Bleeker came off the bench to occupy that player’s spot. Five minutes later, Bleeker was on the receiving end of a perfect Martin cross, and the sophomore finished it off with a goal that held as the game-winner.
“The kid played five minutes and scored a goal,” Meder said.
It’s been that kind of postseason for the Spartans, but that goal doesn’t happen without Martin’s perfectly placed cross.
“We won the ball – I lost it in the first place,” Martin said of the sequence leading up to the game-winner. “I had to go back and get it, made a good tackle, turn and kept going down the base line.
“I saw Shaun out of the corner of my eye, and I thought – I have to thread it through, and I did exactly that, and he made a great left foot finish. It was perfect.”
Armed with a 2-1 lead, the Spartans would not be denied.
“Mr. Meder gave us great advice going into the second half,” Casabon said. “We knew that if we played our game and we got the chance and got the goal like we did – we just made sure to stay focused. I think a lot of people would have been upset down 1-0, but we knew we could come back, and we just showed that.”
The Spartans edged Phoenixville by an identical 2-1 scored in the District 1 3A title game, rallying from an early 1-0 deficit in that one as well.
“This honestly is how both games went,” Meder said. “Phoenixville’s a great team. They have a couple of really good players, dangerous players. That number 27 hit the crossbar on us today, he hit the cross bar on us in the district final. He is a terrific player who we were aware of all the time, at least we were supposed to be. He was dangerous.
“Either team could have gone up a few goals. We were sleeping a little bit at the beginning, and they caught us and put that goal in. Our team has been resilient all year. We’ve had a couple of playoff games where we’ve gone up in the first minute of the game. It’s easy to keep winning that game. It’s really difficult to do what my guys did tonight. Even at the end, Phoenixville was pressing, pressing. They had shots right at the top of the box. Ben Hubley gets in front of two or three shots right in a row, and that ended the game.”
On Friday, at Eagle View Middle School in Mechanicsburg, the Spartans (21-3, 13-3 SOL) will be playing District 3 champion Hershey for a state title. Hershey defeated District 10 champion Cathedral Prep 2-0 in Wednesday’s other semifinal. The 5 p.m. game will be telecast live on PCN.
“I couldn’t imagine this for the world,” Martin said. “It’s a prayer, it’s a blessing. We’re going to go ahead and do what we do best on Friday.”
Springfield Township 0-2 2
Phoenixville 1-0 1
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