Cohesive West Girls' Soccer Ups Win Streek to Four

With her team not playing up to the level that she had anticipated, Cherry Hill West girls’ soccer coach Marie O’Neil called a meeting two weeks ago to talk about the future.

“She told us that if we wanted to see any playoff action and if we wanted to have a great season like we were supposed to, then we had to come together on the practice field," recalled senior Meghan Dumser. “Because that’s where we had struggled the most.”

The message hit home.

Junior Molly Swanson scored two minutes into the game and Alexa Chairo added a goal midway through the first half to give the Lions a 2-0 win over Winslow Township Thursday. The victory was West’s fourth in a row and moved them to 7-6.

Whether or not it was the meeting that fueled the Lions’ impressive turnaround can be debated, but the results can not.

“The team meeting about digging deep and wanting it,” O’Neill said. “They did and we haven’t lost since.”

Christina Ogunsami needed just two saves for the shutout as Winslow rarely crossed midfield and had no real scoring chances. West has also defeated Washington Township, Timber Creek and Camden Catholic during its streak.

“I think we bonded a lot more the past few weeks,” Dumser said. “The past three weeks we have gotten a lot closer off the field and that has helped us a lot. We have gotten our confidence up and have also buckled down at practice. It’s not that we weren’t trying hard at practice, but we weren’t playing as a team in practice. When we started to play as a team at practice, we started playing as a team on the field too.”

O’Neil said the difference in the mindset of the players has been evident over the last few weeks. The Lions still lapse from time to time, and the coach would have liked to have seen a more focused effort Thursday, but is pleased overall with the recent play.

“We have a lot of team chemistry going on right now,” said O’Neil. "The girls are getting along on and off the field and everything is clicking. We are really positive right now; we just have to keep on a high note.”

The next step for the Lions is to keep the winning streak going against top teams. Next week West takes on Shawnee, Seneca and Lenape. With another successful week, the Lions would be peaking just in time for the playoffs.

“We need to beat the bigger teams too,” Dumser said. “We need to not just settle on beating the teams we know we can beat. We have to work hard and we have to try and go after the teams like Shawnee. We can’t just lay back on them, we have to go forward and attack them.”