Expand<\/a><\/p>\nMOSCOW \u2014\u00a0Goals were difficult to come by Tuesday night, but Dallas had an opportunity to change that in the second half.<\/p>\n
David Da Silva had a teammate who had some separation running up the right side, but he saw an opportunity to give the Mountaineers the lead himself and launched a shot from deep.<\/p>\n
\u201cI picked my head up and saw the keeper out of position, and I said hey why not? I\u2019ve been practicing the shot,\u201d Da Silva said.<\/p>\n
Da Silva launched the ball perfectly over the goalie\u2019s head to give Dallas a one-goal lead. Abe Hobson-Tomascik added a second, as the No. 3 Mountaineers shut out No. 2 North Pocono, 2-0, at Trojan Stadium to advance to the District 2 Class 3A boys soccer final.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe team played all as one,\u201d Da Silva said. \u201cWe did what we did at practice, what we went through, all the drills, everything. Everything that we took into practice, we displayed it out here and just showed who we really are.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mountaineers (13-6-1) will face No. 1 Abington Heights, a 4-0 winner over No. 5 Pittston Area, on Thursday at 5 p.m. at Abington Heights in a rematch of last season\u2019s district final that Dallas won in penalty kicks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to just keep playing our game, we\u2019ve got to stay composed during that game, and hopefully we win,\u201d Hobson-Tomascik said.<\/p>\n
The Trojans played excellent defense, especially in the first half. PJ McLaine broke up some plays in the back line to keep Dallas scoreless and delivered nice passes to spark North Pocono runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur defense in the beginning of the season was lights out,\u201d North Pocono coach Graig Arcurie said. \u201cWe were getting a bunch of shutouts, they were playing fantastic. And then we kind of went through a rough patch where they weren\u2019t as organized as I think they should have been. That\u2019s what I said to them in the first half. I thought they were absolutely awesome in the first half as a unit, playing collectively and covering each other and they really did a nice job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eight minutes into the second half, Da Silva blasted the ball over Erick Maldonado\u2019s head to give Dallas a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Midway through the first half, Kevin Osipower put pressure on the North Pocono defense that resulted in a direct kick.<\/p>\n
Hobson-Tomascik hit the North Pocono wall with his direct kick, but he blasted the rebound into the right bottom corner of the net for a 2-0 advantage.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hit the wall, it came back to me, I saw my opportunity, and I ripped it and it went in,\u201d Tomascik said.<\/p>\n
The Trojans (14-5-1) tried to break through late, with their star Rocco Rava making runs and producing corners, but they couldn\u2019t get a goal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted to get back to a district championship,\u201d Arcurie said. \u201cTo lose the players that we lost, probably no one outside of our group really thought probably that we were going to be as good as we were this year. It\u2019s just a testament to the players and the hard work that they put in throughout the whole year, not just the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dallas coach Jesse Williams says his team is finally healthy and playing the best soccer it has all season.<\/p>\n
\u201cEighteen regular season games we had three to five guys out every single game,\u201d Williams said. \u201cSo, it\u2019s really tough to try to develop over the course of the season with new guys, but a lot of guys stepped up today. We rotated probably six or seven extra guys in. Our two leaders, Abe and David, they took over.<\/p>\n
\u201cNorth Pocono is an amazing organization. I\u2019ve been here four years, and this is the third time we\u2019ve met them in the semifinals. They\u2019re a great program, well-coached and there are a lot of good players on the team. So, we respect them and it just feels really good to win this one.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Mountaineers graduated 13 players from last year\u2019s team that captured the district title and advanced to the state semifinals, and will need to beat an Abington Heights team it lost to, 6-2, on Aug. 26 to repeat.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Abington Heights) is great. This is a brand new team for us, but the boys have really shown that they\u2019re playing their best soccer as the season goes on,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThere really is no way to prepare for a team like that. You\u2019ve just got to play your heart out, and hope for the best.\u201d<\/p>\n
Second: DAL \u2013 Da Silva, 8:01. DAL \u2013 Hobson-Tomascik, 20:55; Shots-corners: NP 5-5, DAL 7-4; Saves: NP (Maldonado) 5, DAL (Miller) 4; Records: DAL 13-6-1, NP 14-5-1.<\/p>\n
Abington Heights 4, Pittston Area 0: Nico Bustos had two goals, and Joey Pivirotto had a goal and an assist as the No. 1 Comets shut out the No. 5 Patriots to advance to the Class 3A final.<\/p>\n
Matthew Bednar had a goal, Jack Leuthe and Connor Hiller each added an assist and Billy Johnson had five saves for Abington Heights.<\/p>\n
Jackson Duddek had 11 saves for Pittston Area.<\/p>\n
First: AH \u2013 Bustos, 31:51; Second: AH \u2013 Pivirotto (Leuthe), 49:53. AH \u2013 Bustos (Pivirotto), 70:17. AH \u2013 Bednar (Hiller), 75:23; Shots-corners: AH 26-8, PA 6-2; Saves:\u00a0AH (Johnson) 5, PA (Duddek) 11; Records: AH 19-1, PA 12-8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"North Pocono\u2019s Patrick Dougher challenges Dallas\u2019 Jackson Johns for the ball during the District 2 Class 3A boys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[305,178,180,179,726],"class_list":{"0":"post-18326","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-high-school-sports","9":"tag-scranton","10":"tag-scranton-headlines","11":"tag-scranton-news","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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