Long ball lifts St. Basil over Mount St. Joseph
ABINGTON >> After a scoreless first half, St. Basil Academy scored three goals in the first 20 minutes after intermission.
That was more than enough for the Panthers in a 3-1 Athletic Association of Catholic Academies win over Mount St. Joseph on a hot Tuesday afternoon at St. Basil Academy.
Sophia Mahoney netted the first two goals and Delaney Gayton got the third just before the teams took a water break in the second half. All three goals were scored on similar plays.
“We started to understand how our strengths worked against their weaknesses,” Mahoney said of the second-half offense. “It was obvious that they were trying to hold their line because last year they got us with us trying to make our runs early. We just figured out that if we send it over that would be our strong suit for scoring today.
“Sometimes when we do short passes it gets choked up. It’s easier for us to utilize our speed and work with that.”
Mahoney’s first came on a beautiful, high-arcing pass from Liz Deal to spring her on a breakaway. Her second came when a goal-kick was redirected forward and resulted in another one-on-one opportunity with the Magic goalkeeper.
Gayton made it 3-0 when she found herself alone with the goalie after a successful Panther counterattack.
“Defensively we were playing a little too high of a line,” Mount coach Bill Naydan said. “Gayton and Mahoney have incredible speed that we just couldn’t catch up to. We adapted, it was just a little too late on that. Unfortunately they capitalized.”
St. Basil kept its defensive attention on the 2017 AACA co-MVP Madison Hornig. Basil defender Maria Storck followed Hornig wherever she went and kept her off the scoreboard.
“The plan was basically mark her up, keep her off of our goalie and our other middle defenders,” Storck, who was described by her coach Bob Opalka as a marker extraordinaire, said. “I just cut off her angles and it turned out to get in her head and she just didn’t get past me.”
“They man-marked (Hornig) from the beginning,” Naydan said. “Not able to get anything started that way. We had a lot of chances, just couldn’t put it in the net.”
The Magic’s lone goal came in the final minute of the game. Allie Prue took a corner and Kasey McMahon deflected it in, but it was too late to save the Magic’s season opener.
“Getting a loss in an opening game like this acts as a good learning experience,” Naydan said. “It’s never good to lose, but to have a loss like this at the beginning of the season gives us exactly what we need to work on heading into some tough games this week and next.”
Basil improve to 2-0 with the win after defeating Springfield-Montco 3-2 last week. After losing 12 seniors from last year’s team that reached the PIAA Class 2A final, the Panthers are glad to put their first AACA match in the win column.
“It feels amazing,” Storck said. “Coming from last year to this, we had a lot of difficulty in the preseason with our games, losing the amount of seniors that we did … It’s really different. We’re a whole new team. It’s great to come out with a win.”
