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DOYLESTOWN – As the Wissahickon student section counted down the final seconds of Saturday afternoon’s District One Class AAA title game against Mount St. Joseph Academy, the Trojans weren’t quite sure if they should follow through with the plans they had made if they won a district title or simply go with the moment.
After the briefest of hesitations, they chose the latter, leaping into each other’s arms in a celebration scene that was pure joy.
“We had planned to start doing a dance,” junior Gretchen Guaglianone explained. “We were all looking around – is anyone going to dance?”
Lizzie McKenna says she danced, but that dance quickly got lost in a jubilant mob scene. The second-seeded Trojans had captured their first district title since 2004, defeating the Magic 1-0 in an emotionally-charged contest at War Memorial Field.
“If I had to pick one word to describe how it felt, I don’t know what I would say,” junior Zoe Kale said.
“It was just a big roar – it was like ‘Oh my gosh,’” McKenna said. “It made you want to jump up and down.”
And jump up and down they did while the Mount’s players were left to deal with the heartbreaking loss.
“I don’t think it’s set in yet,” Wissahickon junior Lauren Becker said. “We wanted this so bad. On the bus ride here, I can’t even explain to you how pumped we were for this game.
“It’s just amazing to come out with a win. It seemed like we were the underdogs which made us want to prove to everyone that we could keep up with the best. We just knew we had to play our game the whole entire time, and we’d win this as a team.”
“This means a lot to me,” added senior Jacquelin Coupe, clutching the championship trophy. “Last year, I thought we were going to have a really good chance to win it, so I’m surprised we pulled through and did so well this year.”
This is the stuff dreams are made of, and according to the players, the district title was hard earned.
“From the first day of preseason when we all showed up, putting in all that hard work the entire season and playing all those out of league games, trying really hard to get the seed that we got – we just worked so hard, and it was rewarding,” Guaglianone said.
The Trojans won because they were fearless, and their youth – and the absence of pressure – seemed to work in their favor.
“In the beginning of the season, I didn’t know we could do this, and we went so far,” sophomore Jackie Hibbs said.
Hibbs might have been referring to the fact that she didn’t know her team could win a district title, but there’s a very real possibility the sophomore midfielder – who became a major contributor and scored the game winner on Saturday – didn’t even know that the district tournament existed.
Yes, this Trojan squad is that young, but they didn’t look young as they maintained their composure while the Magic lost theirs.
Consider only that in the game’s pivotal final minutes with the Trojans clinging to their 1-0 lead, the Magic were not down one but two players – one the recipient of a red card and the other of a yellow card. The red card came with 6:54 remaining when Hibbs was taken down on the far sidelines.
“It felt like a bus just hit me,” the diminutive midfielder said.
That left the Mount playing down a player the remainder of the game – including overtime, if necessary. Adding insult to injury, the Magic saw one of their star forwards receive a yellow card with 5:10 remaining. As a result, the Magic played all but the last 10 seconds of the game down two players.
“It’s an aberration,” Mount coach Lois Weber said. “My kids don’t play that way. I don’t know what to say honestly.
“It’s just frustrating to lose in a game where I didn’t feel one team dominated another. It was just a loss of composure. It’s a lesson in life you have to learn. You have to keep your composure regardless of what’s going on sometimes. That’s the good thing about interscholastic sports – you’re always learning.”
It didn’t take long to figure out that one goal could win Saturday’s title game.
The Trojans drew three quick corners but did not manage a shot. The Magic responded with three corners of their own and took only one shot that was turned away by Trojan goalie Rina Lobell. The Magic – usually so lethal on corners - drew eight in Saturday’s game but generated just one shot on cage.
A key was the play of fearless freshman Angela Virtu, who flies on the Trojans’ defensive corners.
“She’s not intimidated being a freshman,” Guaglianone said. “She’s not afraid, and she just went hard.”
“You can count on her every single time,” McKenna said.
Virtu wasn’t the only one doing her job – this was a team effort.
“Angela has the fly, Lizzie (McKenna) and (Jacquelin) Coupe have the post, and it works,” Kale said.
The Trojans – who had not taken a shot in the opening half – drew their fifth corner in the final seconds, and they made this one count. The insert pass came to Becker at the top of the circle, and she immediately passed the ball to Hibbs on her right.
With the scoreboard clock already showing zeroes, the sophomore midfielder fired a shot that somehow found its way through the traffic in front of the cage, hit the left post and wound up in the cage, sending the Trojans into halftime with a 1-0 lead.
“I said to myself when they called the corner and I knew it was coming to me, ‘I’m going to score,’” Hibbs said. “I just had that feeling.
“I thought it was going wide, but it hit the post and then went in. It felt great.”
The second half was a testament to the guts and determination of the Trojans’ tenacious defense.
Early in the half, the Magic missed wide with a shot, and with 19 minutes remaining, Kale stopped a point-blank shot by Brooke Sabia at the goal line.
“I was poking (and) trying to get the ball at the top of the circle, but she got by me,” Kale said of Sabia. “Rina did an amazing goalie dive, but the twins are really good, and she got around her.
“I was terrified. I was like, ‘This cannot go in.’”
It was the closest the Magic would get to scoring the rest of the way.
“The reason why our defense is successful is we really don’t hold onto the ball that long,” Kale said. “We rely on our quick balls up the field.”
It was a defensive style that frustrated the Magic into submission.
With 5:40 remaining, the Trojans – who had a two-player advantage – drew a corner and fired three shots on goal. All three were turned away by goalie Kat Matchett. Then the short-handed Magic drew a pair of corners, but they didn’t so much as collect a shot.
Interestingly, coach Lucy Gil was considering changing up her defensive strategy coming into the game.
“Our original game was to put a chaser on Brooke Sabia if we needed to, but we went out with our regular lineup,” the Trojans’ coach said. “The girls really wanted to. They said it had us winning the whole season, and they wanted to go out with their regular lineup, and so we did, and we never switched back.
“They played really, really well. We did frustrate them a lot, and I think it got the better of them towards the end. I thought the defense did a really good job of defending their corners. They’re deadly on corners, and they did a great job. My defense did awesome.”
The players never wavered on their request to stick with the defense they knew best.
“We just wanted to play how we know how to play because we were confident,” McKenna said. “If we switched anything up, we would get lost in it, but we felt comfortable and relied on each other to block the goals in our usual spots.”
“Our defense – we don’t always get the ball, but we always get some kind of stick in there to get in the way,” Guaglianone added.
Gil went on to laud the play of her midfield.
“Jackie Hibbs and Gretchen Guaglianone have been playing amazing hockey, and you add Lauren (Becker) to the mix, and our midfield is just really strong,” the Trojans’ coach said.
“I don’t think it’s our midfielders individually,” Guaglianone said. “We all work together, we pass off, we use our forwards, and we use our defense. We’re working together.”
And therein lies the secret to the success of a young Trojan squad that opened the season in the shadows of but finished on top of the world.
“To know that we’re not done yet is even better,” Kale said.
The Trojans will begin state tournament play on Tuesday.
WISSAHICKON 1, MOUNT ST. JOSEPH ACADEMY 0
Mount St. Joseph Academy 0 0-0
Wissahickon 1 0-1
Goals/Assists: Wissahickon – Jackie Hibbs 1-0, Lauren Becker 0-1.
Shots: MSJ-3, W-5
Corners: MSJ-8, W-9
Saves: Kat Matchett (MSJ) 4, Rina Lobell (W) 1.
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