LOWER MERION — How often does a team get the chance to avenge an early season loss in back-to-back playoff games? On Saturday, in the District One Class 4A girls soccer quarterfinal round, Garnet Valley will look to complete that rarely offered twin-killing. All the Jaguars have to do is knock off the district’s top seed, Central Bucks East.

First though, it was a measure of revenge against Lower Merion, who on Sept. 15 handed the Jaguars their only Central League defeat, which cost them the league title.

This time the task was a little more daunting, a second-round district game on the road. But Garnet Valley was increasingly stingy on defense after a scoreless first half, and finally cashed in the game’s only goal when Jade Delcollo’s high-heat shot went under the crossbar into an upper corner, boosting the Jaguars to a 1-0 victory over the Aces.

The win puts them back on the road for a quarterfinal date against C.B. East, which Thursday defeated neighboring foe C.B. South for the third time this season, 3-0. Before that, C.B. East helped build its nonleague resume by beating Garnet Valley, 2-0.

Revenge may be sweet, but it certainly isn’t easy.

“It’s definitely going to be a hard matchup on Saturday because we’re most likely playing C.B. East,” Garnet Valley junior midfielder Raelyn Smith said. “But I feel like if we keep playing the way we’re playing we’re going to be able to win.”

That would be playing with boundless measures of energy, which showed up late in that latter half Thursday, as the Jaguars seemed to beat the Aces to more than their share of balls. Smith and fellow junior midfielder Gwen Parker had much to do with that. But there was no shortage of ably assisting Jaguars when it came to frustrating the Aces’ attack efforts in the second half.

“They (the Jaguars) got the sun against them, we had a little bit of a breeze at our backs, … but I don’t know,” Lower Merion coach Kevin Ries said. “We definitely had more chances in the first half, and I don’t think we had one corner in the second half.”

The Aces didn’t make any of their scoring chances count, but they didn’t break or so much as make a critical mistake, either. So Sara Hadzic helped Garnet Valley make its own luck.

She had been a touch unlucky right before the halftime bell, Hadzic just missing over the Lower Merion net with a shot then. But taking a throw-in along the sideline, Hadzic beelined a crossing pass past one teammate and into range for Delcollo, who didn’t miss on her hard kick from the six-yard box with 18:40 left to play.

For Delcollo, the timing seemed quite right.

“If it’s 0-0, it goes to penalties, and you don’t know if you can always trust that,” she said. “So we wanted to get a goal for sure and we wanted to make it happen fast.”

Despite superb efforts by Garnet Valley’s defense and goalie Danica Fean, the Jaguars knew it was far from over, especially since Lower Merion had tagged them with that 2-nil defeat back on Sept. 15. The Jags, now 13-4-3 overall, would go on to defeat two of the top league teams in Radnor and Strath Haven, currently the top two seeds in the District One Class 3A tourney.

But the Lower loss and 1-1 ties with Conestoga and Penncrest, respectively, left Garnet Valley with an 8-1-2 league mark, runner-up to 10-1 Radnor. Lower Merion ended the regular season just a tick above the Jaguars, thus earning a No. 8 district seed to GV’s No. 9. The Aces finish the season at 13-4-3 overall.

But there was no attention paid to power rankings or seed numbers on this day. Nor was Garnet Valley left shorthanded by four key injuries, which coach Joe Brangiel said put them at a disadvantage the last time they played the Aces.

Nevertheless, it’s never easy.

“I felt like it was definitely going to be a hard game for us,” Smith said. “We did lose to them in the league, but we didn’t have all of our best players then. And it was kind of like the environment; we came here today pumped up on the bus. I feel like we had more energy coming out and we wanted it more.

“We were fortunate because we had Dan making all the saves. But I felt confident in our team that even if we were down, we could come back and win.”