Plymouth Whitemarsh clinches share of SOL Liberty title with win over Upper Dublin

WHITEMARSH >> Plymouth Whitemarsh clinched its eighth straight league title Monday afternoon with a 6-1 Suburban One League Liberty Division win over Upper Dublin at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School.

The Colonials improved to 8-0 and will at least share the top spot in the SOL Liberty with Wissahickon, who entered Monday with two league losses.

“It feels really good,” PW’s Kaleigh Missimer said, “especially because I’m a senior. All the seniors before me haven’t lost, so I feel like I’m carrying on all the hard work they’ve done.”

Plymouth Whitemarsh pulled away in the second half against Upper Dublin. After leading by one, 2-1, at halftime, the Colonials out-scored the Cardinals 2-0 in both the third and fourth quarters.

“Despite mistakes I think the team is sticking together and sticking to the gameplan and finding ways to deal with adversity,” PW head coach Charise Halteman said. “I thought we maybe didn’t play our best first half – it was a pretty close score. I felt we had opportunities to finish and put the game more in our control and they came out and did that in the second half.”

Two of the second-half goals were nearly identical. Hailey Copestick sent the penalty corner insert passes to Missimer, who sent them right back to Copestick at the post for a pair of goals. The first made it a 3-1 PW lead and the second extended the advantage to 5-1.

Missimer had four assists in the game. She assisted on both of Copestick’s goals and two of Ava Borkowski’s three scores.

“We have Ava and our forwards who are really good goal scorers,” Missimer said. “I love the role of the person who gives it to them. I love the assists almost more than the goals because I just love the idea of helping everybody else. I get my assists and it feels really good to do that.”

“(Missimer) really sees the field well,” Halteman said. “She sees passes ahead and I think she likes to be a playmaker in the center. She’s also capable of scoring some great goals, but she definitely sets up the people on the forward line. She’s huge too in organizing our team defensively and organizing people in transition. She plays a really important role for us in the center.”

Borkowski scored the game’s first goal less than four minutes in. PW’s 1-0 advantage lasted until the middle of the second quarter when Upper Dublin’s Maisie Hanson found Jenn McCarry to tie the game. Borkowski added a second goal 2:44 before halftime to give the Colonials a 2-1 lead into the break.

“The first half was better,” Upper Dublin head coach Heather Boyer said. “We had them 2-1. That’s the best we’ve played them in years. We gave them unlimited opportunities on corners and the fact we had them 2-1 at half says a little bit about the bend-don’t-break mentality and trying to keep their attack at bay. There were missed opportunities we had in our offensive circle where we could have cut the deficit a little bit but didn’t execute. That’s the difference between lots of experience in this sport year-round versus in-season.

“I’ll give my kids credit – they played hard the entire time and never gave up. That’s all I can really ask for.”

In addition to Copestick’s two goals and Borkowski completing her hat trick, Regan Gehman scored in the second half for PW, deflecting a Molly Lynch hit into the back of the cage.

Cardinals (5-3) goalie Dara Fishman finished the game with 17 saves.