Upper Dublin finishes strong against Wissahickon
UPPER DUBLIN >> Every time Upper Dublin got in trouble against rival Wissahickon Wednesday afternoon, the Cardinals responded.
They answered an early two-goal deficit with five straight goals. When their lead was trimmed to one late in the first half, they scored two goals in the final 67 seconds before intermission. When their lead was cut to one again in the second half, the Cardinals locked in on defense and added three goals to close out a 10-6 Suburban One League American Conference win at Spark Field.
“This is huge for us,” UD coach Dee Cross said. “I always say to the girls the record doesn’t matter, the rankings don’t matter – when we play Wissahickon it’s a battle. It’s a neighborhood battle and we have not been able to beat them in the last couple years. This was a really good win for us. It was a team win. Credit to Wissahickon – we played the whole game. I’m just really proud of the girls for pulling it out.”
Wissahickon scored two goals in a 1:37 span to get within one, 7-6, with 19:07 remaining in the game. The Trojans had plenty of chances to tie the game over the next nine minutes, but Upper Dublin goalie Anna Biermaas made a big save, Wiss hit a post and the Cardinals young and improving defense did what it needed to to maintain their lead.
“We worked on communicating more and we were getting ahead of our cutters,” Dinkel said of the Cardinals defense. “I think in the end it just came to we wanted it and we kept working. We forced turnovers and ultimately were able to hold the ball and win.”
“When we got it down around the eight,” Wiss coach Chuck Wurzbach said of his young team, “we just couldn’t find the net. We had some opportunities, just couldn’t pull the trigger.”
Allie Gay extended the Upper Dublin (9-2, 5-0 SOL American) lead to 8-6 when she scored with 10:16 remaining and Dinkel made it 9-6 with 6:47 to go.
From there, Upper Dublin possessed the ball nearly the entire rest of the way. The Cardinals turned it over once, but immediately got the ball back and held on until Dinkel netted her fifth goal of the game with seven seconds remaining.
“In practice (playing keepaway) is one of the things we work on because a lot of games come down to the final goal,” Dinkel said. “You don’t want to be sloppy and give it up. We work on running around and keeping it so we don’t accidentally turn it over.”
“That’s impressive,” Wurzbach said. “We tried to chase them down and they were able to move the ball. We had one opportunity and we quickly turned the ball over, so that doesn’t help, and then we were a man down for a good chunk of that, too. It’s never easy, it’s almost impossible, if you’re a man down in that situation to cause a turnover.”
Wissahickon (4-5, 3-2 SOL American) got off to a fast start, building a 2-0 lead thanks to goals from Sophia Stehlik and Alexa McCabe over the first 7:44 of the game.
Upper Dublin got on the scoreboard courtesy of Kelly Senior 9:40 into the game and scored five goals in a 8:46 stretch. Senior added another goal while Ava Shohen, Lily Buckius and Dinkel scored to put the Cardinals ahead 5-2.
“The goals at the beginning of the half by Kelly and Ava to get the momentum going to get us that lead that we kept the rest of the game were really important,” Dinkel said, “because without those we wouldn’t have been able to keep the lead and ultimately win.”
Emma Greenberg and Nora Ryan scored goals just 63 seconds apart to get Wiss within 5-4 with less than two minutes before halftime, but that was enough time for Dinkel to score twice and make it a 7-3 game at the break. Her first came 1:07 before intermission and the second just three seconds before the horn after the Cardinals made sure to run down the clock.
Upper Dublin 10, Wissahickon 6
Wissahickon 4 2 – 6
Upper Dublin 7 3 – 10
