BERWYN \u2014 Two of the best girls soccer programs in the Central League renewed acquaintances on a chilly, breezy Thursday evening and if you got to Teamer Field late, you missed early fireworks.<\/p>\n
Dylan Steinberg\u2019s goal just minutes into the first half stood up as the Aces posted a 1-0 victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started off strong,\u201d said Lower Merion coach Kevin Ries. \u201cIt\u2019s soccer, some days you do, some you don\u2019t. This was just one of those nights we connected passes. It was great to watch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barely 30 seconds into the game, the Aces (9-1-1 Central, 14-2-1 overall), received a quality chance. Junior Harper Gust intercepted a pass from a Conestoga defender that turned into a shot that goalie Emily Klaiber parried into the air before corralling it.<\/p>\n
The danger for Conestoga was just beginning, nearly two minutes in, Steinberg was on the left edge of the penalty box at an angle. Instead of a cross, she shot and it found a home inside the right post for a 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe really wanted to come out strong because in states last year, we lost to \u2018Stoga, so this was our revenge,\u201d Steinberg said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s always discouraging when you go down within the first five minutes of a game,\u201d said<\/p>\n
Conestoga coach Deane Mariotti. \u201cI was proud of the way the girls lifted and came back and played the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
A short time later, Steinberg nearly doubled the lead from the same spot, but her shot instead found the arms of Kleiber.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was unfortunate, I got under it a little too much,\u201d added Steinberg. \u201cWe played really well. We held the 1-0 and that\u2019s hard to do. We did a great job. This was our best game of the season, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Aces kept control of the first 40 minutes, outshooting the Pioneers, 9-2. All of Conestoga\u2019s six efforts on the evening came from distance as Lower Merion\u2019s back line didn\u2019t allow anything inside the penalty area in front of goalie Cate Cantu.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a mix of old and young on the backline,\u201d said Ries. \u201cThe new girls have really stepped up and played hard. (Freshman) Sofie Jackson has played great. Lilly Barabee was awesome along with Kendall Baker. They were great in the back and stymied a lot of what they were trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conestoga (8-3, 10-6-1) did have more of the possession in the second half as both team\u2019s defenses took the spotlight. There were only seven combined shots and none of them were on target to force the goalies into a save.<\/p>\n
The Pioneers did have a couple of good looks at the top of the box. Ryann Jennings had a shot that didn\u2019t miss the top corner by much.<\/p>\n
\u201cSecond half was much better than the first,\u201d said Mariotti. \u201cThe girls recognized where the spaces on the field were and did a nice job on how to figure out and exploit those spaces in the second half.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lower Merion, ranked fifth in the District 1 Class 4A rankings, posted its third straight 1-0 victory to close out the regular season and its sixth consecutive clean sheet. They have allowed two or more goals in a game just twice in 17 contests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis win gives us so much confidence because \u2018Stoga historically is such a great program,\u201d said Steinberg. \u201cBut we can\u2019t let the confidence get to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Pioneers are 11th as the playoffs near.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are actually going to spend (Friday\u2019s) practice reflecting on the season,\u201d Mariotti said. \u201cI think the girls have worked really hard and I think that they have been thoughtful about the areas where they have grown in and pushed themselves. I think we\u2019ve had a couple of unlucky games that could have gone either way. We took some good teams into overtime situations. So, I think they\u2019ve had a lot of great experiences over the course of the first 17 games of the regular season that they can rely on going into the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lower Merion 1, Conestoga 0Lower Merion 1 0 \u2014 1Conestoga 0 0 \u2014 0Lower Merion goal: Steinberg.Goalie saves: Cantu (LM) 3; Klaiber (C) 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BERWYN \u2014 Two of the best girls soccer programs in the Central League renewed acquaintances on a chilly,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,5704,185,184,186],"class_list":["post-6320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-conestoga","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6320","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=6320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}