Methacton downs Plymouth Whitemarsh with three-goal explosion

WORCESTER >> Call it the Timeout of the Season.

Through the opening 12 minutes of Thursday afternoon’s PIAA District One Class AAA field hockey matchup at Methacton High School, the seventh-seeded Warriors and 10th-seeded Plymouth Whitemarsh played dead even, and visions of penalty strokes were dancing in spectators’ heads.

Then, Warriors head coach Sarah Quintois called timeout.

And afterwards, the game was never the same.

Emily Sayre, Jen Rees and Maddie Alderfer keyed a three-goals-in-2:02 explosion that paved the way for a 7-1 Methacton victory and a berth in the district quarterfinals where the Warriors will meet the winner of the Downingtown East-Council Rock South game that was contested Thursday night.

As for the timeout, Quintois simply said it was because the Warriors had veered slightly away from their game plan.

“I thought, in the beginning, it was going to be an even battle,” Quintois said. “But we kept playing the ball into the middle, which is their strength, and we really weren’t playing together.

“We weren’t following our game plan.”

Quicker than you could say, “Everything’s fixed,” the Warriors went into beast mode, with Sayre poking home a rebound off a corner, and then talling again just 50 seconds later.

And when Rees converted an Alderfer pass, off another corner, at the 13:52 mark to give the home team a 3-0 edge, the game, for all intents and purposes, was over.

“We took the timeout and talked about what we had to focus on,” Sayre said. “We needed to keep the ball out of the middle and connect on our passes. And when we did those things we began scoring goals.”

And PW was left to figure out what happened.

“The play was very even early on,” said Colonials head coach Marianne Paparone. “I was pleased with our start.

“But it seemed once we let that first goal in, and it was a soft goal, we kind of hung our heads.”

For good measure, Emily Mycek hammered home an unassisted goal at the 8:29 mark, and the only thing left to do was figure out the final score of the Methacton victory.

Goals by Alderfer and Julia Dickinson early in the second half were icing on the Warriors cake.

Karly Kaminsky made it 7-0 before PW’s Kennedy Reardon got the visitors on the scoreboard in the contest’s final 6:00.

And the Timeout of the Year was an unqualified success.

“We talked about keeping the ball out of the middle, but we also talked about turning it up,” Alderfer said of the timely break in the action. “We had a real good pep talk.”

“We were pretty calm,” Sayre added, “because they hadn’t scored on us, and the times when we’ve panicked this year have been our downfall.”

Along with a move into the quarterfinals, Quintois said the Warriors now have a little more confidence moving forward.

“It gets tougher from here, but this one will help us,” she said. “Now we have to find out who we’re playing.”