The history of Midd-West girls soccer is limited mostly by the fact that the western Snyder County school has existed in that form for a scant seven years.
But the fact that the seniors who will take part in the state's final four tonight have been enrolled for more than half the time there have been Mustangs playing soccer in Middleburg doesn't mean there isn't a tale to tell of the road this group of young women followed to get where they are.
The story actually begins well before these youngsters were playing soccer - in fact, it goes back past their parents' time. Soccer has been the dominant fall sport in that part of Snyder County for more than half a century.
The schools that preceded Midd-West each captured state gold - West Snyder (1973) and Middleburg (1974) were the first two PIAA champions. The boys sport grew to two divisions in 1985, and a third was added 10 years ago.
The semifinal round is the one where the Midd-West boys were cut off in their deepest run into the state bracket. The Mustangs lost to Pottsgrove, 3-0, in a Class AA boys game at Hershey in 2008.
The first state girls soccer championship game was played in 1992, and a year after that, girls soccer came to Midd-West. It, too, has grown to three divisions in the fall - Class A was added this year - and a handful of districts in the eastern part of the state continue to play the game in the spring.
Here's one thing most people don't know, or may not remember - although that squad wore the blue and gold of Middleburg, it was the very first Midd-West team. When the sport was established, the coach - the late Trent Erb, an accountant from the West Snyder side of the district whose niece persuaded him to get involved - insisted that, if only one school would have a team, girls from both must be allowed to play.
Even in its infancy the Middleburg team was a district qualifier. Eventually, both schools had their own teams - West Snyder played at one point in an early iteration of what is now the Mountain League - and the Middies followed in the footsteps of their fathers as a contender on the pitch.
In 2001, the pinnacle of that school's effort was achieved when the team - having come out of District 4 as the fourth-place team in Class AA - upset District 1 prep powerhouse Merion Mercy to get to the final four, where the Middies drew a match with perennial state contender Villa Joseph Marie, another private academy from the Philadelphia suburbs. The Jems won that game and the state title - against, oddly enough, a WPIAL team that knocked out that year's District 7 champ, none other than South Park.
Middleburg ended at the state quarters in 2003, the final year before the two schools merged.
Since becoming Midd-West, the girls team made it into the state bracket in 2004, the first year the new school existed (first-round loss); and 2005, when the Mustangs fell 1-0 to Westmont Hilltop in the quarterfinals.
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Jeff Fishbein is sports editor of The Sentinel. Contact him at jfishbein@lewistownsentinel.com.
