Archbishop Wood beats Masterman for District 12-2A championship

PHILADELPHIA >> Archbishop Wood won the District 12-2A championship game, 6-1 over Masterman, Thursday afternoon at Ramp Playground.

The district title is the Vikings second championship of the season after winning the Philadelphia Catholic League last week. Thursday’s win also secures their spot in the PIAA-2A state playoffs.

“(Winning District 12) really means a lot,” Wood senior Megan Hickey said. “Since we won the PCL, too, we’re just adding up the things that we’re winning. We’re working on getting to Hershey.”

“I’ve been here four years and it’s the first time we got to play in (a District 12 championship game),” Wood coach Tom DeGeorge said. “We didn’t know what to expect, but it was good. Coming off a big game winning the Catholic League and everybody thinks you’re automatically in states, but then you realize you have to win this one, too. It was good. The girls are excited.”

Wood wasted little time establishing their dominance over Masterman. Meghan Matthews put the Vikings ahead in the seventh minute. She received a long pass from Alyssa DeGeorge, carried the ball up the right side and scored into the bottom left corner.

Five minutes later, Hickey put two away in a two-minute span. Her first was courtesy of Madison Kennedy and the second unassisted.

“I just took my time and when I was open I took the shot,” she said.

Emily Beck made it a 4-0 game later in the first half when a Vikings corner bounced toward the edge of the box and she lofted the ball high, off the keeper’s finger tips and into the net.

“We were confident on the ball,” Tom DeGeorge said of the offensive success. “We took our time. We had a lot of chances. When you get up, it’s very hard to come back in a big game. Once we got up a couple goals we took the air out of the game a little bit, moved it around. I was able to get everybody in, so it was good.”

“We know how to work the ball,” Hickey said. “We take our time, we don’t rush anything. That really gets us up (the field).”

The 4-0 advantage lasted for more than 30 minutes, until Alyssa DeGeorge scored on a corner courtesy of Ava DeGeorge in the 61st minute. Beck added her second goal of the game to make it 6-0 in the 64th.

Wood earned eight corners in the game and put 18 shots on goal, plus another two off the crossbar.

The PIAA-2A state playoffs start Tuesday, Nov. 9, when Wood faces the District 1 champion.

“We’re taking it one game at a time,” Tom DeGeorge said. “Our goal is to be at Hershey. We wanted to win the PCL plaque, we won that. We wanted to win the district championship, we won that. Now four more games. It’s one game at a time now. We’re looking forward to Tuesday and we’ll go from there.”