North Penn scores 4 in 1st half, rolls past Hatboro-Horsham in District 1-4A 2nd round

TOWAMENCIN >> As North Penn’s Jamie Stewart began approaching the ball on a free kick just outside the 18-yard box, a cry came from a Hatboro-Horsham partisan.

“I know you can’t shoot.”

Stewart provided a quick rebuttal, blasting the shot past the diving effort of Hatters goalkeeper Zack Kim and into the right side of the net, pushing the Knights’ lead to 2-0 as their District 1-4A boys soccer second-round contest neared the midway point of the first half.

“I kind of shut it out a little. Celebration at the end, was like ‘You hear me?” said Stewart, who cupped he ear for a moment jogging to the corner flag to enjoy the goal with teammates. “I’ve just been trying to put the free kicks in all year. I’ve been hitting them a bunch this year. So just trying to do what I do.”

And the Knights’ high-powered attack continued to do what it’s done for most of the season Thursday night at Dock Mennonite. Third-seeded North Penn tallied four goals in the first half – the last two by Luke McMahon – and rolled to a 4-0 victory over No. 19 Hatboro-Horsham.

“We knew we had the potential in us to play good like this but we just had a struggle for the past few games,” Stewart said. “We’ve been playing top 10 teams in the district and we got another one of Saturday. So, we’re happy with this but we’re really looking forward to Saturday.

Aidan Jerome scored the night’s opener while goalkeeper Brett Schwengels denied a penalty kick in the 15^th minute with a kick save to keep North Penn (18-1-0) up 1-0.

A little more than two minutes later, Stewart’s free kick doubled the advantage and the Knights were on their way to the district quarterfinals for the third time in three seasons.

“I think we just kept the pressure on,” North Penn coach Paul Duddy said. “When we’re playing high pressure and doing it well, it’s good, it’s great.”

North Penn (18-1-0) hosts No. 6 Central Bucks West – a 2-1 overtime winner over No. 11 Pennridge – 3 p.m. Saturday in the third meeting between the Suburban One League Continental Conference co-champs in 2018. The teams split their first two matchups – NP beating CB West 4-2 Sept. 17 while the Bucks handed the Knights their only loss 4-3 in overtime Oct. 11.

Saturday’s winner clinches a PIAA berth while the losing side heads to playbacks to try and earn District 1’s fifth and final spot in states.

“We know what we have to do but we just got to execute,” Stewart said. “Cause we know what they have, we’ve played them twice already. And if we come out confident and do what we need to do, we can get it done.”

Hatboro-Horsham, which won its first district game since 2008 Tuesday – upsetting No. 14 Perkiomen Valley 4-3 on penalties after a 0-0 draw –  ends its season at 11-8-1.

“Obviously we had a lot of success the last two years before this year and this year we had a lot of young guys starting early on,” Hatters coach Kyle McGrath said. “And for them to get our first playoff win in 10 years was awesome on Tuesday and hopefully we can build on it.

“When we saw the seeding we were a little unhappy that we had to play North Penn but that’s the breaks and we knew it was going to be tough but hopefully the guys returning got that little bit of playoff success and we can return next year and make a run again.”

Since losing to CB West, North Penn has won four straight, scoring four goals in each game. The Knights now have 70 goals on the season –conceding just 16 – and have score fewer than three goals just twice this year.

“We average like three, four goals a game which is a lot,” said Stewart of NP’s offensive output, which is at 3.7 goals per game. “And we’re really confident that we can keep producing goals. We’ve scored four and three against West so we’re looking to just up our defense on Saturday.”

North Penn grabbed a 1-0 lead less than final minutes into the contest. A cross by Ryan Stewart was head away by a Hatter defender at the six-yard box, but a charging Jerome got to the loose ball and chipped a shot into the net at 35:38.

A handball call on North Penn in the box, however, gave Hatboro-Horsham the chance to pull level on a penalty kick at 25:40. But Matt Harmon’s effort from the spot was stopped by Schwengels, who dove to his right and got a piece of the ball with left leg. The Knights’ Josh Jones reached the rebound just before Harmon and sent it out of danger.

 “We knew going into the game that they were powerful offensively and we wanted to try and keep them off the board as long as possible,” McGrath said. “We didn’t do that but then with the PK, could of got right back into the game and credit to Brett, their keeper, made a good save and they had luxury of scouting us last game at PKs, they might have known where Matty was going to go. But keeper still had to make the save and he did.”

Jamie Stewart proceeded to make it 2-0 NP on his free-kick goal at 23:21 after the Hatters were whistled for a hand ball at the edge of the box.

“Me and my brother always line up together, we got lefty-righty combo on it,” Jamie Stewart said. “We look at the wall, look at the goalie, wherever he is in the net, if he’s farther left, farther right, we’ll decide who shoots it.”

The Knights pushed the lead to 3-0 at 12:34 before halftime. Carter Houlihan capped his long run down the left side to the HH box by chipping a pass to McMahon, who chested the ball down then put a shot past Kim.

“The run that Carter made down the left side is like if anybody has that on film, but that would be something you want to see or study,” Duddy said.

McMahon collected his brace three minutes, 58 seconds later, the senior striker getting behind the defense for a 4-0 lead at 8:36.