GLAX Ousted by North Penn in Districts

As the clouds covered the sky at the start of the girls lacrosse District One first round game at , the Spring-Ford girls lacrosse team were in a familiar place. Just a few weeks ago, the Rams defeated North Penn, 12-10 at Spring-Ford High School.

Unfortunately, things wouldn't look so familiar by the middle of the first half. Spring-Ford fell behind quick, giving up six goals after 18 minutes of play. The Maidens led 6-2 with 11:04 left in the first half, but something just clicked.

"We had some breakdowns on defense. We weren't covering the cutters. We had to play more with a sense of urgency in a district playoff game," said Maidens head coach Jami Wilus Behm. "Every little ball, every second counts. It was a big part of if you let down for one second or one minute, any team can score a lot of goals and they strung a couple on there. We needed somebody to step up and put a stop to the run. Lacrosse, much like other sports is a game of runs. Teams make runs and you have to stop their run and put a goal in and we were able to get one before halftime."

And then the sun began to peak out from the dark clouds. Not a drop of "forecasted" rain came down on the field, but that light was metaphoric of what the Rams did next.

From that point until the end of the first half, the Rams went on a tear. Starting with a goal at 8:38 from junior Sasha Wozniak, the Rams didn't look back. Wozniak scored another to assist in a run in which Spring-Ford scored five unanswered goals to take the 7-6 lead with 11 seconds to go. Other contributors in that run included sophomore Kira Gensler, senior Shannon Stenson, and junior Leann Shaw, who had the go-ahead goal.

With 3 seconds to go in the half, North Penn scored on a fast break right after Shaw's score. The game was tied at the half.

"That last goal was just not giving up and making sure we had it tied going in and we said it was 0-0 going into the second half," said Behm. "It was the last game we were going to play on this field either way, and we wanted to make it a win."

North Penn wouldn't let the Rams have much to say about the second half.

"We just sort of fizzled out," said Rams head coach Amy Short. "We couldn't get our offense moving and nothing would go in. We couldn't penetrate the eight. I'm not quite sure what was going on - if their heads deflated a little bit or what. They had a couple of really fast girls that were beating us and calls weren't going our way."

Spring-Ford kept up with the Maidens for the first 10 minutes of the second half. But, after two quick scores by North Penn with 15 minutes left to go, Spring-Ford had a hard time finding an answer.

"A lot of mistakes, a lot of throwing away passes, a lot of interceptions. Too many mistakes. We had too many mistakes in the last 15 minutes where we couldn't even get the ball down to the eight, because we were throwing the ball away. They increased their pressure on us and we dropped the ball. That was where we hurt ourselves."

North Penn won the game 16-9 and will go on to face fourth-seeded Harriton on Thursday. Maidens head coach Jami Behm paid homage to a tough opponent.

"We knew they were tough and definitely not a 20th seed in terms of their caliber of play," said Behm. "They lost five times this season and three games were to Boyertown. They took Henderson to overtime. We knew they were strong and we needed to play a complete game. We had opportunities in the first half that we didn't exactly capitalize on. The team played really well and we're definitely going to take some people by surprise."

As for Spring-Ford, their season is over and seniors Meghan Ellerbusch, Cassidy Novotny, Tracy Sloan, Stenson, Lex Versak and have effectively ended their high school careers.

"I mean, when we're playing hard and we're clicking and the girls are listening, a lot of it is about executing. We had a game plan," said Behm. "We watched the film a number of times. We did some things in the first game that we changed in the second game. I think we were able to catch them a little off guard and adjust on the offensive and defensive end to help out."