×

Tigers rip rival for title

ELIZABETHVILLE — East Juniata stuck to its theme and just kept chugging along in its 6-2 win over Juniata to capture the Tri-Valley League girls’ soccer championship Thursday at Upper Dauphin.

It had an eerily similar feeling to the first two times the teams met over the last couple of weeks.

The Tigers dominated time of possession and closing speed in the first two games, leading to a combined 12-0 routing in the regular season. That same thing applied in the teams’ third meeting in a span of two weeks.

That type of success led to East Juniata (17-1-1, 11-0) shutting out the Indians for more than 200 minutes before Rowe Shepps put an end to that in the second half.

Tigers’ coach Valeria Dressler — no stranger to the setting having won a couple as a player for the Tigers — didn’t exactly doubt that nor the team’s undefeated record in TVL play.

“We wanted to do so well and we knew these girls had the drive,” she said. “But to actually see it and say it is completely different. It’s just an amazing feeling to have these girls want to succeed. It makes the season so easy and exciting.”

Thea Neimond, Hailey Swartz and Kierstyn Fogle led the offense as each scored a pair of goals for the Tigers.

It was apparent East Juniata wanted to establish its passing lanes and make the Indians have to close in on the ball — something they have struggled with in the previous meetings.

That helped make the needed separation for Neimond to notch the first goal without five minutes being taken off the clock.

Neimond had her second goal midway through the first half when she found the slightest room between two Juniata defenders and perfectly placed the ball in the goal on a sliding kick.

Juniata just didn’t seem have an answer offensively in the first half. On its first real scoring threat, it went away quickly and the Tigers used their speed to their advantage. They managed to get the ball away from the box and get it down to Juniata’s side of the field where they were too far behind Swartz to put the Tigers up two goals.

“Very simple to explain this game,” Juniata coach Brian Strawser said. “We got beat by the better team. We can talk about the different aspects of soccer, but we got beat by a better team. We could list every one, and in every one they were better in all of them, plain and simple.”

Juniata has been known to get things established in the second half all season long, and Thursday was no exception.

The Indians struck for their first goal against East Juniata this season when Shepps found the back of the net to close the deficit a bit, but the defense continued to struggle finding ways to stop the Tigers quick and potent offense — even as they were shooting too wide or high for a large portion of the half.

The team seemed excited heading into the matchup, something Strawser was pleased to see despite the recent history.

“The girls were loose,” he said. “Tonight coming down road, (there was) singing, laughing and in fact coming down the mountain, we had to tell them ‘alright, let’s focus now.’ So I thought we were loose, but I thought we were loose at other games too, but it just comes down to hard work and that starts in practice.”

The Tigers didn’t hang their heads with Juniata (9-8-1, 7-4) finding ways to make scoring happen.

Fogle struck for back-to-back goals in the contest roughly six minutes apart to take any of Juniata’s momentum away. Swartz put the game away for good when she scored both her and the team’s last goal.

The type of offensive performance from the three has Dressler feeling pleased.

“We really worked at the beginning of the season that we didn’t want one goal scorer,” she said. “These girls have shown us that everybody on the field could be goal scorers so I think that if they’re hungry for the goals, our team can get the goals.”

Juniata awaits its playoff seeding in District 6, having completed the regular season. East Juniata caps off its regular season Saturday at Lewisburg.

East Juniata 6, Juniata 2

First half

EJ — Thea Neimond (Kierstyn Fogle), 36:08; EJ — Hailey Swartz, 24:53; EJ — Neimond, 15:31

Second half

J — Rowe Shepps, 37:41; EJ — Fogle (Neimond), 34:37; EJ — Fogle, 28:24; EJ — Swartz, 14:12; J — Rachel Bargo, 10:09

Shots: EJ 10-3. Corners: EJ 5-1. Saves: J-8 (Kali Foltz-Mahala Laub); EJ-3 (Lily Sankey-Kayla Forry)

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *
   

COMMENTS

[vivafbcomment]

Starting at $3.92/week.

Subscribe Today