Springfield finds offense in SOL American win over Cheltenham

At halftime of Tuesday’s Suburban One American Conference game Cheltenham coach Mark Woodcock gave his team a passionate speech about how the second half of the game was not going to be about the result as much as it was about effort.

“The second half was a lot better than the first half,” Woodcock said. “It been a difficult season, we’ve had some injuries, we played against some teams that have been good. The one thing that I’m proud of is the girls have always given their best effort in every game.”

Although the Panthers played with much better effort in the second half it wasn’t enough to overcome the 3-0 halftime deficit as they fell to Springfield 4-0.

Cheltenham entered the game still searching for its first win in the American Conference as it dropped a tough game to the conference’s top opponent in Quakertown Monday night.

“We played Quakertown, the best team in our league, and we played their Senior Night at their place and we played very well,” Woodcock said. “We competed with them. It was tied at the half. We ended up losing but it was the kind of game where you come off feeling you’ve done the best you can do and you come out with your head held high and I think today was a bit of a letdown.”

Springfield was also coming off of a league loss coming into Tuesday’s game but the feel for the Spartans was a bit different than Cheltenham as they didn’t get the result or play the way they would have liked.

“We played Upper Moreland and we were awful,” Springfield coach Suzette Wolf said. “They weren’t into the game. You could see they weren’t even trying. I don’t know what it was, they just were not mentally prepared to play yesterday.”

Although Springfield experienced some offensive difficulties early in the season the Spartans put together one of its best offensive efforts Tuesday afternoon as they scored four goals on 14 shots.

Springfield got its confidence early as Emily Cooney got the scoring started a little more than two minutes into the game. About 15 minutes later freshman Elena Hincapie scored her first goal of the season.

“We scored early and that really does make a difference for us,” Wolf said. “Emily Cooney is a spark for this team and she has been the entire year. She’s more of a runner, she’s a track star, but for us, she’s a spark. She never gives up (and) she’s always smiling. The soccer game is a happy thing for her to be doing, she’s really enjoying herself and she’s our leading scorer because of that.”

Despite not having a great record from playing in the tough Suburban One League the Spartans still have an opportunity to make the District-One AA playoff so they would certainly like to build up some momentum for a match up with what most likely would be New Hope Solebury in the playoffs.

“We will probably play New Hope at New Hope,” Wolf said. “We played them at the beginning of the year and lost 2-1. It’s a game.”