Unionville pressures its way to a shutout win over CR North

EAST MARLBOROUGH >> All kinds of successful teams in a multitude of sports use pressure to get an upper hand on opponents. Whether it’s a full-court press in basketball or the blitz in football, if employed correctly, pressure leads to stress and that often leads to forced mistakes.

That was, essentially, a key part of the game plan devised by Unionville girls’ soccer mentor Joe Ratasiewicz on Thursday in the second round of the District 1 4A Tournament. And his Indians executed it to perfection, blanking Council Rock North 4-0 to win the program’s ninth in a row.

“We got the ball forward,” Ratasiewicz said. “When we do that we put a lot of pressure on defenses, which is what we’ve been stressing the second half of the season.

“We want to play on (our opponent’s) half, not our half. And we have some kids that can really press forward.”

Seventh-seeded Unionville improves to 15-4 and will take on No. 2 Boyertown on Saturday in a quarterfinal clash. Tenth-seeded Council Rock North ends its season at 13-4-2.

“We haven’t played (Boyertown) recently, but their coach is a friend of mine and they are every bit as tough as any team we’ll play,” Ratasiwicz said.

On Thursday evening, what looked like a battle between two evenly-matched teams suddenly veered one way when the Indians scored a pair of first half goals in a three-minute span. The rest of the way, Unionville seemed more determined and proceeded to outwork North.

“This is big. We wanted to make up for what happened the last couple seasons,” said junior forward Sara Darlington.

“A lot of our seniors and juniors were here when we lost in the first round last season and the year before,” echoed Ratasiewicz. “It was good to get that out of our system. I told them to put the pedal to the medal – it’s a green-light special. Let’s keep going.”

They certainly got the message.

“Coach just told us to keep pushing forward, and we listened to him,” Darlington said.

Midway through the first half, Darlington had a scoring chance and whiffed on a bouncing ball in front of the CR North goal. But just a few minutes later, she ran down a diagonal pass from teammate Hayden Wilson, out-racing a defender in the process, and caught the keeper moving left and went right for the tally.

“It was a beautiful shot,” Ratasiewicz said.

“The two defenders didn’t communicate that well so I just tried to take advantage,” Darlington added.

It would end up being the game-winner, but the Indians kept up the pressure. And just a few minutes later, Alex Wilson lofted a lengthy shot over the keeper that found the top corner near the far post to make it 2-0.

“Alex has a lot of skill,” Ratasiewicz said. “We’ve been encouraging her to shoot the ball, and she has an outside shot that is pretty dangerous.

“We noticed that the (North) keeper (Grace Needham) was coming out high and we kept preaching to hit it over her.”

It happened again in the first few minutes of the second half when senior Melanie Landry corralled a long rebound and blasted it in over the top.

“We knew that in order to score we had to take some shots from the outside,” Alex Wilson pointed out.

Sophomore Hope Politi added an insurance goal in the waning minutes to round out the scoring. But afterwards, Ratasiewicz credited the fast start with much of the success that followed.  

“We were on the other end of that when Conestoga dropped three goals on us in 12 minutes,” he recalled. “That takes the air out of the bubble. In our case (Thursday night) it really energized us.”

Unionville had a plus-six advantage in shots on goal, and goaltender Katie Borley and the Indians’ defense kept North from generating many good scoring chances.

“It was a solid effort all around. You have to play quick but you can’t be scattered,” Ratasiewicz said.

“We held up pretty good in the back end. We didn’t mess around with the ball.”

Alex Wilson added: “We came out strong and confident. We worked hard and were determined to win.”

Unionville 4, Council Rock North 0

Council Rock North                                    0 0 — 0

Unionville                                                     2 2 — 4

Unionville goals: Darlington, A. Wilson, Landry, Politi.

Goalie saves: Needham (CRN) 11; Borley (U) 8.