Jenkintown cruises past Dock Mennonite after three quick goals

JENKINTOWN >> The Jenkintown field hockey team came out ready to go for Senior Day Wednesday afternoon.

The Drakes scored their first goal less than three minutes into the game and two more in the ensuing five minutes.

That’s all they would need.

Jenkintown built an early lead and cruised to a 3-0 Bicentennial Athletic League win over Dock Mennonite in the regular-season finale at Jenkintown High School.

“We were pushing the ball,” Drakes senior Natalie Kolb said. “We focused a lot on getting in front of Dock’s players because being first to the ball you can obviously go around them. We were pushing up, getting our defense pretty high up really helped.”

Kolb assisted the game’s first goal just 2:40 into the game. She found sophomore Cady Westkaemper for an easy score.

“We know Dock’s goalie tends to come out high on plays,” Kolb said. “So we were thinking just get the ball around the goalie, have two girls on the post — one of them being Cady — and just try to get it to one of them was our mindset going into the game and it worked.”

Only 2:33 later, the Drakes were on the board again. This time it was sophomore Carly Mulvaney finding the back of the cage.

Kolb finished off the scoring 2:15 after the second goal. Dock goaltender Sophea Zaskoda made the initial save and stopped a couple rebounds, but Jenkintown kept hammering away. Eventually, Kolb was able to get the ball through Zaskoda and into the goal.

“The goalie was once against kind of out of place,” Kolb said. “We were just going for it. I finally got an opportunity to hit it with the opposite side of my stick and get it in, which was cool.”

“We came out flat,” Dock coach Michelle Waldspurger said. “Jenkintown played very aggressively. They just came out and wanted it. They played well and we just came out flat, unfortunately. They scored a couple goals and then we played behind. We started to play after that time, but unfortunately we just couldn’t score. Just one of those games.”

The Pioneers got more chances in the second half (four shots on net compared to one in the first half), but couldn’t capitalize.

“Balls went wide, they went under our stick, different bounces,” Waldspurger said. “We just couldn’t connect. We tried. There was definitely an effort there. The girls played hard. It just didn’t come out the way we wanted it.”

Jenkintown’s defense was a big reason why Dock couldn’t get on the board. The Drakes didn’t give the Pioneers any space to get shots off when they earned penalty corners and goaltender Lauren Brockwell stopped all five shots that came her way.

“The defense brought the ball outside,” Kolb said. “They were quick. They could beat any girl who had any sort of breakaway towards the middle. They were just really fast, got their sticks low and really did a good job.”

With the regular season in the books, Jenkintown finished second in the BAL and Dock third, both behind undefeated New Hope Solebury.

New Hope will be the No. 1 seed in the District 1 Class-A playoffs with Jenkintown No. 2 and Dock most likely No. 4, which earns them a home playoff game in the eight-team tournament.