Eagles edge Mounts

An early surge of pressure from No. 9 Cumberland Valley (13-7-0), capped by Austin Warren’s goal in the 10th minute, helped the Eagles earn the other spot in the district final.

“It’s been a really good season for us,” Eagles coach Matt Billman said, “and we really renewed an emphasis on attacking. We said, ‘Let’s attack. Let’s make the other team adjust to us.’ We just really stressed that, in the first 5-10 minutes, let’s go at these guys and get after their backs.”

Warren collected a long pass from Luke Truong and punched the game’s first goal past Ephrata goalkeeper Cole Hummel (nine saves) on the far side.

“He was a handful for them up top,” Mounts coach Rob Deininger said of Warren. “He was a little quicker, a little bit better striker, than we’d seen all year. He made a nice run and a nice finish.”

No. 5 Ephrata (17-4-0) made en effort for an equalizer midway through the first half, but junior defender Talon Davidson slid into a vacated to make a defensive save on an Andrey Patrushev shot on a rebound that had hit the post.

“Kudos to him,” Billman said of Davidson, “He dropped deep and worked that out. I was really pleased with that.”

Davidson added a goal in the 34th minute on a corner chance, and Jesse King finished a crossing pass from Devyn Thomas. Goalkeeper Matt Zambetti stopped six Ephrata shots.

“It just got away from us a little bit,” said Deininger, whose Mounts meet Chambersburg in a third-place game with a trip to states on the line Saturday at a site and time to be determined. “They were a little bigger, stronger, faster than we were tonight.”