PHILADELPHIA — If the girls soccer season at Strath Haven was going to end, Gino Miraglia had only two wishes.
One was that it would end with a state championship. The alternative was that the Panthers would play as hard as they did in Tuesday late in a 1-0 loss to Archbishop Wood in the opening round of the PIAA Class 3A tournament.
“I am super proud,” the Panthers’ coach said as the season came to an end. “I have been here 17 years and this group has really come together. If you would have told me at the beginning of the season that we would have been here – in the district finals, and then in the states – I’d have said you were crazy.”
After falling to Villa Maria in the District 1 final, the Panthers gave Wood, the Catholic League champion, persistent second-half challenges in the state opener at Holy Family University. One small issue: The first half.
“We just looked a little tired,” junior Annie Dignazio said. “They were definitely controlling it. But at halftime, we just talked about how important it was to come out and just give it your best, no matter what the score says. And honestly, I think we controlled the second half, but sometimes you just can’t put the ball in the back of the net.”
Wood’s Ava DeGeorge did not have that problem seven minutes in, taking a nice feed from Kylie Wiest at the top of the box and firing high into the net. Vikings goalkeeper Lauren Greer would make certain the goal stood up after intermission.
“Kylie was dribbling up and she had two or three people on her,” DeGeorge said. “I was open and I was calling for the ball and she played a really good ball back to me.”
While the Vikings continued to pressure, they, too, felt something change in the second half.
“You could really tell they wanted to win,” DeGeorge said. “And it was really hard to play against them.”
Among the changes – the increase in spirit included – that made a second-half difference was a switch to a 4-4-3 formation from a heavier mid-field setup. The result: Strath Haven took seven of its eight shots in the final 40 minutes.
With 31:40 left, Greer needed to leap high to tip a seemingly net-bound attempt from Marley Feinberg. Greer also needed to come up big to repel a Kaia Smith attempt with 4:20 to play. At the other end, Strath Haven goalie Laura Shea helped keep it close, jumping high for an inspirational save with 23:17 showing.
“Every single player on that field,” Feinberg said, “gave every single thing that they had.”
Few, though, played with the ferocity of Dignazio.
“She is a great competitor,” Miraglia said. “She beats double-teams, triple-teams. Everybody knows her now. She’s just relentless.”
The Panthers finished at 14-6-1 but were heartened that 11 key contributors will return in 2024.
“The coaches always say this is a family,” Feinberg said. “It’s tough to say goodbye to your family. But I think this program is in good hands.”
The Vikings, who improved to 11-1, will engage Abington Heights Saturday in the state quarterfinals.
“We take a lot of pride in how we play,” coach Tom DeGeorge said. “The first half today, I thought we were really good. I thought maybe we should have finished a couple more. But they gave us a lot of problems in the second half – a lot of problems.
“We know it takes four games to win a state championship. They are not all going to be pretty. But we grinded it out and did what we had to do.”
The Panthers may not have advanced in the tournament, but they did leave with plentiful reasons to look forward to next season.
“This is something for us to work off of,” said Dignazio, who has committed to play college soccer at Brown. “I think it’s a good thing that we lost the district championship because next year, with a new group of freshmen, we are going to come out very hard and wanting it. This is just a a taste of what could have been.”
