CB South defeated Wissahickon to earn a spot in the District One AAA title game while Springfield (Montco) saw its season end. To view photos of the CB South/Wissahickon game, please visit the Photo Gallery.
#2 CENTRAL BUCKS SOUTH 4, #3 WISSAHICKON 1
The dust had not settled on the Titans’ big win over the Trojans when co-coach Jeff Harding was lauding the response of his team when it took the field after a week that was anything but normal.
“I’ll tell you what, both Marie (Schmucker) and I were saying – we’re impressed with how resilient they were with this huge layoff,” Harding said. “Obviously, we weren’t able to practice, and we didn’t know what was going to happen.
“I think both teams, in the early going, were a little rusty, but we were just saying we can’t believe how resilient they were in terms of wanting to play, coming to play and getting on the board early. We wanted to put it on target today, and good things were going to happen, and that’s what they did.”
And what was the Titans’ practice schedule during a week that saw classes postponed and power outages everywhere?
“An hour and 10 minutes with a five-minute phone call – ‘Girls, quickly get your stuff together because we’ve got to go to War Memorial,’” Harding said. “That was the extent of it.
“We had one practice – it seemed like we were off for months.”
“To come out and play the way they did showed a lot of pride and heart,” Schmucker said. “They have a lot of determination.”
As a result of Friday’s semifinal win, the Titans will be playing for a district title on Monday when they take on fourth-seeded Unionville.
“This is huge,” senior Amber Steigerwalt said. “We lost two key players last year, and we have a pretty young team, but our ultimate goal this season was to make it further than we did last year.
“To be in the championship game is surreal. It’s just shocking, but it’s a great feeling.”
On the other side of the field, the mood was decidedly different.
“We didn’t play well,” Wissahickon coach Lucy Gil said matter-of-factly. “We didn’t come as intense as we should have.
“As I have said a million times, a turf field like this really slows us down, and we work on speed, and we work on small passes, and you just can’t do that on this kind of (surface) because they can pick them off so easily – the ball doesn’t travel fast enough.
“That really threw us, but I really don’t think my girls were moving well to the ball, and they were allowing them to get to the ball first. It’s always been our motto this year to get to the ball first, and we just really couldn’t manage to do that. They were beating us to the ball.”
In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, both teams had to deal with an unexpected break that wasn’t necessarily welcome.
“It was a long time without games, and it was so unexpected because of the hurricane,” Titan junior Mackenzie Harding said. “We’re all really close, so we were all talking, we were texting.
“It’s funny because we all really wanted to practice because we truly all do want to get better, and without practice, you don’t know how you’re going to come out. This hurricane threw a wrench in stuff, but we were talking all throughout it, and we were getting ready mentally, if not being able to practice.”
When the decision was finally made to play the game on Friday, the players were ready.
“We were just really pumped to play as soon as we possibly could,” Steigerwalt said. “We were ready for this, whether or not we practiced the last couple of days or not.”
And ready the Titans were, getting on the scoreboard less than five minutes into the game when Mackenzie Harding scored.
“That gave us a lot of momentum,” she said. “We were out here warming up, knowing what we had to do. We were visualizing it. I was so excited.”
“That really set the tone for the game,” Steigerwalt added. “That one goal not only broke their team down, but it upped us a little bit.
“We had more enthusiasm when we were playing, and we just wanted to keep pushing through that.”
The Titans took that 1-0 lead into halftime. Steigerwalt scored just over five minutes into the second half and less than a minute later, Corrine Kenney delivered her first of two goals. Melanie Fry broke the Titans’ shutout bid with a goal, but Kenney (Shannon Dougherty assist) answered to close out the scoring.
The key to the game, according to Steigerwalt, was teamwork.
“We always know where to pass the ball,” she said. “We practice all the time together, we’re always together, we just know where everyone is on the field, and I think it really reflects in how we score our goals.
“Even in the huddles after we score a goal, everyone is always so pepped, and it’s just great to be on this kind of team.”
The Titans’ impressive postseason run comes on the heel of last year’s second round exit.
“Nobody wants that,” Mackenzie Harding said. “We work so hard in practices, we’re always trying to take it one game at a time, and we were kind of stopped short last year, so we’re just practicing hard and taking it one day at a time.”
The Titans will face Unionville at West Chester Henderson on Monday at 3:30 p.m. They will be playing for the big prize – a district crown.
“We’re really proud of them,” coach Harding said. “Maybe we needed the break. It’s been a lot of hockey, so maybe it’s a godsend.”
CLASS AA
#5 GWYNEDD-MERCY 3, #3 SPRINGFIELD (MONTCO) 2
The Spartans’ season came to an end sooner than they had hoped when they fell to the Monarchs in Friday’s third place game at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School. The loss came 24 hours after Springfield fell to Upper Perk in a semifinal game.
Playing on consecutive days after a week layoff was not exactly the kind of scenario coach Linda Nixon was hoping for when the postseason began.
“We had to play back-to-back, and I guess there’s not much value in trying to get the best hockey to the best place,” the veteran coach said. “I would imagine if it had been in AAA and it was the semifinals, they probably would have given them a practice day. I don’t know, maybe not.
“I’m not being critical, but I don’t get what happened yesterday and then to follow it up with a game today. Maybe they couldn’t have placed us anywhere tomorrow. I don’t really know, and I’m not in a position to know.”
The Monarchs took a 1-0 lead when they converted a penalty stroke, but the Spartans answered with a goal when Colleen Morris also connected on a stroke to knot the score 1-1. Gwynedd came back with a goal to go into halftime with a 2-1 lead. The two teams exchanged goals in the second half with Marie Brockman scoring for the Spartans.
“We played better today than we did yesterday,” Nixon said. “I don’t think Gwynedd is quite as strong as Upper Perk, but they were a very good team. I hope they all go far.
“We lost to Gwynedd last year in this round, and we were trying to play our best. It was very sad to see it end.”
Nixon bids farewell to 11 seniors.
“It’s a really wonderful group,” she said. “The fact that some of them really, really played super today took a lot of the sting off the loss. They will be missed.”
The Spartans’ coach lauded the standout performances of Adrienne Baer, Syd Campbell, Katie Morris, Colleen Morris and Libby Field.
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