Plymouth Whitemarsh extends SOL American lead with win over Wissahickon
WHITEMARSH >> Plymouth Whitemarsh gave itself some wiggle room in the Suburban One League American Conference with a 5-1 win over Wissahickon Tuesday afternoon at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School.
The Colonials improve to 8-0 in league play while the Trojans fall to 6-2.
“It’s important that we came in and took care of what we needed to,” PW coach Charise Halteman said. “We expected it to be a good game and I think the first half definitely felt like the time was winding down – definitely played between the midfield a lot in the first half. We expected that. Ava (Borkowski) was marked a lot tighter today so we knew they were going to bring us a good game and I think they did.”
“Our focus is always just game-by-game,” Wissahickon assistant coach Shelley Uthgennant said. “We try not to look too far ahead. It’s just now we need to prepare for Thursday’s game. When Thursday is over we’ll worry about Friday’s game. We just try to win as many as we can.”
PW, the top seed in District 1-AAA, took a 1-0 lead just over seven minutes into the game on a Borkowski goal. It was the first of three goals for the junior.
“This year she is doing a great job at creating goals for herself,” Halteman said, “reading the keeper, reading the defender in front of her, really pushing through. She’s just doing a really nice job and I think she’s under a lot of pressure. A lot of teams are marking her pretty tight, but she’s not letting that bother her. She keeps working and finds a way to create something else in the circle.”
Livia Truong scored later in the first half to send the Colonials to the intermission with a two-goal lead.
“The first time we played them I think at the half it was 4-0,” Uthgennant said. “So we looked at it as a positive that is was only 2-0 going into the half. We were definitely playing better than we had the first time we played them. I see that as a positive. I think we stayed together more as a unit this game … we just didnt do a good job capitalizing on our corners and we really needed to.”
Borkowski scored on a penalty corner 61 seconds into the second half, but Wiss’ Kendal Williams responded 67 seconds later to keep it a two-goal game, 3-1.
Kaleigh Missimer used fancy stickhandling around the cage to score and extend PW’s lead before Borkowski finished off her hat trick and the game’s scoring to make it 5-1.
The loss is just Wissahickon’s second of the season – both coming against their league rival Plymouth Whitemarsh.
“They’re super aggressive,” Uthgennant said of PW. “They play incredibly composed for the entire 60 minutes. They’re very good at playing in systematic triangles to always be backing each other up. It’s like you beat one and there are two more there coming at you from both sides. They have some really good individual players who are really key for them getting the ball down the field in such a clean way.
“We were pretty hopeful for today, but then once we lose one of our best defenders (Brynne Miller) then one of our best midfielders (Grace Ball), that really changes our lineup quite a bit.”
