Kenah’s 2 goals lead Souderton past Pennridge

EAST ROCKHILL >> An early deficit was the catalyst for Courtney Kenah Monday night.

“For me it was just seeing them score,” the Souderton senior said. “It just lights a fire in me and that’s like, ‘OK, I’m not going to let that happen,’ Just motivates me and then gets going.”

Pennridge had the better of play in the opening portions of its SOL Continental Conference field hockey matchup with the visiting Indians and almost 10 minutes in, the Rams struck to go up 1-0.

But Kenah was quick to put Big Red back on level terms and 64 seconds later found the back of the cage against to put Souderton in the lead. The Indians added another goal by Autumn Hunter before halftime and that proved enough for Souderton to come away from Helman Field with a 3-1 victory.

“Honestly we just had a slow start,” Kenah said. “We weren’t ourselves. I think it’s tough, we came off a tough loss back on Friday night and we just had to get the motivation again to get ourselves back to where we were last week.”

Both teams were looking to bounce back after their first losses of the season last week — Pennridge to Central Bucks South in overtime Thursday, Souderton to Gwynedd Mercy Friday. The Rams (4-2-0, 2-2-0 conference) were on the front foot at the start which paid off in freshman Payton Muth’s goal at 20:41.  The lead, however, only lasted until Kenah’s first tally at 18:13. By the break, the Indians (7-1-0, 5-0-0) built a two-goal advantage and while the Rams withstood 10 Souderton corners in the second half, Pennridge could not find a way to cut into the deficit.

“They’re exceptional, like they’re a really good team but honestly thought we played really well,” Pennridge coach Becky Spahr said. “Our team played really solid team defense the whole way across. And to go up one was exciting but I knew they have some scorers on their team. So I’m just proud of them for staying with it.

“I mean 0-0 second half was really nice for us. It would have been nice to get a goal in. Yeah, I thought we did a good job against them.”

Souderton is coming off its first PIAA tournament appearances in 12 seasons and so far at the start of 2019, the Indians have shown they could make another run at reaching states.

“I think we’re a pretty young group, like a lot of them are new, first-year varsity players which is awesome,” Kenah said. So it’s awesome to see how well everyone’s been playing being such a young team and coach Sue (Casiato) always says people keep asking her if it’s going to be a rebuilding year and she says yes but we’re still going to be good and I think that we’re proving that.”

Big Red has scored at least three goals in seven of its eight games and last Thursday knocked off Central Bucks East on the road 1-0 in OT, ending an eight-game losing skid to East and snapping the Patriots’ 20-game SOL Continental win streak.

Kenah, a Penn commit, said the win over CB East “was definitely like top field hockey moments of my life for sure,” but the following day the Indians were handed their first loss 7-4 by Gwynedd Mercy.

“It was hard to have probably our two hardest games of the season back-to-back,” Kenah said. “But that game, the score, I feel like we played well, the score might have not represented that but I think we stuck in it the whole game.”

For Pennridge, despite Monday being a second-straight loss after a 4-0 start, Spahr saw plenty of positives the Rams can carry over during the rest of challenging week — visiting CB East 3:30 p.m. Wednesday then hosting North Penn 3:30 p.m. Friday.

“This is a tough week for us,” Spahr said. “We got Souderton then East and North Penn so honestly this was momentum for us. The girls are happy with how they played, I’m happy with how they played. So it’s just confidence.”

Souderton has two more road games this week, taking on Methacton in a nonconference matchup 5:15 p.m. Wednesday then visits Quakertown 3:30 p.m. Friday.

“There’s a lot we can work on,” Kenah said. “Obviously most of our goals happened in a few minutes and then after that we couldn’t get any in the goal so we obviously have to build upon that playing Methacton on Wednesday and that’ll be a tough game. So we have to keep building off that.”

Pennridge grabbed the 1-0 lead Monday when Abby Ludlow drove then sent a pass to the front of net, where Muth was in position to knock the ball in at 20:41.

“I think we came out really strong and we might have surprised them,” Spahr said.“They were kind of laid back a little bit. Although, yes, our goal was awesome for us I think it also got them moving a little bit too.

Souderton equalized on its second corner. Anna Gwiadzinski sent the insertion pass to Kenah at the top of the circle with Kenah blasting a shot in at 18:13.

“I would say probably like 30 percent of my goals this year have been from like rips from the top of the circle on corners,” Kenah said. “So that’s definitely something I’m getting used to.”

Kenah collected her second goal by deflecting a shot by Lauren Kenah, putting the Indians up for good at 17:09.

“My sister Lauren Kenah she ripped it and I just tipped it into the goal,” she said.

Some persistence from Hunter after a corner gave Souderton at 3-1 lead with 7:47 left in the first half. A shot by Courtney Kenah helped along by Gwiadzinski bounced off the Pennridge goalkeeper’s pads to Hunter, but Hunter’s shot was denied by the stick of the Rams’ Emily Amsden. The ball, however, came back to Hunter, who put her second chance into the net.