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DOYLESTOWN – Lindsay Rheiner, showing no regard for the stiff wind and bitter cold in her sleeveless uniform, came out of a textbook double team with the ball and sprinted the length of the field.Moments later, the fleet-of-foot sophomore turned a nifty Elly Plappert pass into a goal that gave Council Rock North a 5-1 lead midway through the first half of Monday’s non-league game against Central Bucks West.
“I sort of break loose, I guess,” Rheiner said. “I like running around the field. I don’t know – I can’t have anything between me and the wind.”
To the Bucks, who watched the Indians close out the first half with a 6-1 run, it must have felt as though Rheiner and her teammates were running like the wind - playing Monday’s game at a speed the Bucks could not match.
“They’re very fast,” West senior Morgan Ashworth said. “It’s really hard to combat a quick team, especially when they have a lead and they’re holding the ball. To send the double, you have to be equally fast, and they had that advantage.”
The Indians took an 8-2 lead into halftime and never looked back, withstanding a mini run by West and then running out the clock with an effective stall game as they notched an impressive 12-6 win.
“It was a total team effort today,” said Carolyn Kacergis, who is a co-coach along with Pat Toner. “Everyone across the board from attack to defense gave 100 percent, so it really was a team win.”The loss was the first of the season for the Bucks, who fell to 3-1.
“I told my kids after the game – we don’t get better if we don’t play these types of teams, so somewhere down the line, we are going to benefit from losing today,” West coach Mary Thomas said. “They have good fundamentals, and they played very sound defense.
“When we do our fundamentals well, you could see we had a couple of good (stretches), but when we dropped the ball – a faster team will pick it up, and that’s what happened today.”
Casey Doyle led a balanced Rock North attack with three goals while teammates Molly Doyle, Kara Magley and Katy Rinker each added a pair of goals. Plappert contributed a team-high three assists, setting up some picture-perfect goals during Rock North’s first-half tear that sealed the Bucks’ fate.
“Today everything was working,” Plappert said. “Everyone contributed, and it just worked.”Did it ever.
The Indians scored twice before the Bucks ever so much as gained possession of the ball. The fun started with Plappert finding Rinker in front of the net for the score 28 seconds into the game. A minute later, Casey Doyle connected on an eight-meter shot.
At the 20:24 mark, West’s Ali Howell (Tori Ueland assist) came around the crease for the score, making it a 2-1 game, but the Indians had an immediate answer when Plappert turned a Magley pass into a goal. The Indians led 4-1 after Plappert found Doyle with a perfectly-timed pass for the score, and then came Rheiner’s goal after the defensive takeaway that gave the Indians a four-goal advantage.
“There’s a whole shift in the emotion,” Rheiner said of the Indians’ run. “We took away what they wanted to do, and we pretty much took over the game.
“We just have this desire to get out there and win. Today we didn’t have our starting goalie (Amy Griffith), but we went out there not thinking about what we didn’t have and left it all on the field.”
West broke the Indians’ run when Ashworth connected on a free position shot, but Molly Doyle answered with an eight-meter shot for the Indians. Another goal by Casey Doyle was followed by a Hannah Plappert score that sent the Indians into halftime with an 8-2 lead.
A key to the Indians’ dominance was their ability to control the draw.
“We have been working on that a lot, and it just started working today,” said Plappert, who took the draws for the Indians. “We had 14 out of 18 of the draws, and that’s so important because when you get the draw, then you’re the one who’s starting off the play and you can control what’s going on.”
Ashworth echoed that sentiment.
“They got the draw control, which is important because then they could just run their offense,” Ashworth said. “They ran their offense pretty cleanly. If we could have sent more doubles, we could have controlled the game a little better.”
The Indians upped their lead to 10-2 after goals by Magley and Rinker before the Bucks got on the scoreboard in the second half on a goal by Ueland. Molly Doyle got that right back for the Indians before Ueland and Ashworth scored to make it an 11-5 game. Goals by Magley and West’s Jennmarie Campbell closed out the scoring, but this day belonged to the Indians.
“In practice, they’re working hard, they’re listening to the things we’re trying to teach them, and it’s starting to come together,” Kacergis said. “They are a young team, and they need to get experience, but they’re trusting each other, and it’s starting to click.”
EXTRA SHOTS: Casey Doyle came up with one of the game’s prettiest defensive plays, stopping a West offensive player dead in her tracks in a one-and-one battle heading toward the Indians’ goal. Doyle not only made the clean check but came up with the ball and took it down field…the Indians were without starting goalie Amy Griffith, who went home sick. Jackie Fagan was pressed into emergency duty. “She really stepped up and did well,” Kacergis said.
COUNCIL ROCK NORTH 12, CENTRAL BUCKS WEST 6
Council Rock North 8 4-12
Central Bucks West 2 4-6
Goals/Assists: CR North – Casey Doyle 3-0, Kara Magley 2-1, Katy Rinker 2-0, Molly Doyle 2-0, Elly Plappert 1-3, Hannah Plappert 1-1, Lindsay Rheiner 1-0. CB West – Tori Ueland 2-1, Morgan Ashworth 2-0, Ali Howell 1-0.
Shots: CRN-19, CBW-13
Saves: Jackie Fagan (CRN) 3, Alyssa Batty (CBW) 4.
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