{"id":23716,"date":"2014-10-29T15:56:39","date_gmt":"2014-10-29T19:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=23716"},"modified":"2014-10-29T15:56:39","modified_gmt":"2014-10-29T19:56:39","slug":"uhs-boys-soccer-continues-roll-beats-conestoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=23716","title":{"rendered":"UHS boys soccer continues roll, beats Conestoga"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"UHSSoccer-2\"<\/a>

Players and fans converge after Unionville High School’s boys soccer team won its 18th game of the season, without a loss, beating a tough Conestoga team, 3-0, to earn in a berth in the state playoffs, which starts Thursday.<\/p><\/div>\n

EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 On Saturday, the Unionville Boys varsity soccer team began its march through the District 1 playoffs much in the same fashion as its run through the Chest Mont league regular season with a pair of opening round victories in front of raucous home crowds this week.<\/p>\n

First up for the Indians, beneficiaries of a first round bye due to their #1 seed status, was Pennsbury, fresh off their first round 1-0 win over Radnor.\u00a0 The Indians jumped out to a quick lead as Senior Mid-fielder Jeff Stautberg muscled a loose ball — that found its way inside the 6 yard box courtesy of a free kick by Senior Co-captain Andrew Chegia– past the Pennsbury keeper.\u00a0 That 1-0 score stood up into halftime.\u00a0 In the second half the Falcons applied pressure throughout.\u00a0 Pennsbury tied the game 7 minutes into the second half on a nice put back from a scramble in front of Senior UHS keeper Henry Shafer.\u00a0 Unionville, however, was un-phased by the Falcons\u2019 quick strike and delivered one of their own 2 minutes later as Senior Mid-fielder Sammy Alfonsi drilled a low liner from 15 yards out into the right hand corner for a 2-1 UHS lead.\u00a0 The game was very physical and that style of play contributed to a Unionville defender receiving a questionable second yellow card which required the Indians to play down a man for the remainder of the game.<\/p>\n

Tied 2-2 after regulation, the teams played two 15-minute scoreless halves. Despite playing a man down, the Indians had their chances in both OTs but couldn\u2019t convert.\u00a0 In regular season the game would have ended in a 2-2 tie, but in the District playoffs ties are settled by penalty kicks.\u00a0 In last year\u2019s first round District playoff game against Boyerstown, the Indians went to PKs and came out victorious.\u00a0 Everyone wanted to know if they could do it again.<\/p>\n

\"UHSSoccer-1\"<\/a>

Senior Unionville goalkeeper Henry Shafer came up big in both games this week \u2014 shutting out Conestoga and battling through a tough penality-kick session in overtime with Pennsbury last weekend.<\/p><\/div>\n

The student section gathered along the fence as both teams lined up to take alternating PKs.\u00a0 UHS was up first and the Pennsbury keeper made a diving stop of Alfonsi\u2019s offering.\u00a0 More often than not in high school soccer if a keeper can make a stop in PKs, his team wins.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t looking good for the Indians when Pennsbury\u2019s first kicker found the back of the net blasting a shot over a diving Shafer.\u00a0 But in the end, Henry Shafer came up big by making three PK saves.\u00a0 The last one on the 8th<\/sup>\u00a0PK attempt by Pennsbury secured the win for the Indians as the student section erupted.<\/p>\n

Last night the Indians had a rematch with Conestoga.\u00a0 Conestoga and UHS played to a 0-0 2 OT draw just two weeks ago.\u00a0 Everyone anticipated another tight match with PK potential.<\/p>\n

The stands were full with supporters from both teams as the game tipped off.\u00a0 Conestoga dominated in early play with great ball movement.\u00a0 They peppered the UHS defense with a number of good shots but each time those shots were turned away by the strong backline defenders of AJ Berstein, Brian Cortese and Jack Seilus.\u00a0 The game\u2019s first score came via a great \u201cup ball\u201d pass to Junior Striker Peter Ferraro who ended up going one-on-one with the Conestoga keeper.\u00a0 When Ferraro goes one-on-one with a keeper good things happen for UHS.\u00a0 Last night was no different.\u00a0 UHS lead 1-0 at the half.<\/p>\n

Conestoga began the second half with the ball and a noisy crowd in support.\u00a0 But their supporters were quickly silenced when, 1 minute into the second half, Chegia intercepted a pass, made his patented outside twirl move, raced down the right sideline and made a 90-degree cross to a waiting Stauberg who wasted no time in depositing another playoff goal and a 2-0 lead.\u00a0 If that lead looked daunting to Consetoga (UHS led the Chest Mont in fewest goals allowed), it must have looked impossible 90 seconds later when Alfonsi put a rebound into the back of the net for a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n

Conestoga to their credit kept firing shots on goal for the duration of the game.\u00a0 Shafer kept coming up big and finished with 15 saves.<\/p>\n

With the scoreboard reading 3-0 and \u00a0the clock showing :00, the UHS student section could not contain their joy as they jumped the fence and raced onto the field in support of their soccer classmates.\u00a0 The sight of 100 students jumping up and down and celebrating as a community was a sight to behold and is what makes high school sports so special.\u00a0 For the 11 UHS seniors, last night\u2019s game would be their last in the friendly confines of the UHS stadium.\u00a0 It will not, however, be their last high school game as they have now qualified for the state tournament and return to action on Thursday night when they take on Central Bucks East.\u00a0 The game will be played at Great Valley at 5pm.<\/p>\n

What a magical season for the Indians.\u00a0 18-0-2 and counting.<\/p>\n

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EAST MARLBOROUGH \u2014 On Saturday, the Unionville Boys varsity soccer team began its march through the District 1 playoffs much in the same fashion as its run through the Chest Mont league regular season with a pair of opening round victories in front of raucous home crowds this week. First up for the Indians, beneficiaries […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,4],"tags":[32,61,6323],"class_list":["post-23716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-sports","tag-indians","tag-soccer","tag-unionvillehigh-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}