Barons stop Lady Mounts

Four games from the end of the regular season, Ephrata and Manheim Central girls battled Tuesday night like it was a championship soccer game.

For all intents and purposes, it might have been.

Carrying much of the play in the Mounts’ end, the Barons scored two second-half goals a minute apart — one off the right food and one off the head of senior Elizabeth Levy — to record a dramatic 3-1 Lancaster-Lebanon League Section Two win and end Ephrata’s unbeaten stretch at 12 games.

The win at Mountaineer Field lifted the Barons (6-1 L-L, 12-2 overall) into first place in the section.

“We’ve told the girls all season it’s about finishing,” Barons coach Andrew Stoltzfus said. “When we learn to finish anything’s possible and tonight we did a good job of that.”

Mounts goalkeeper Jocelyn Umana kept Ephrata in the game in the first half with one circus save after another. But she had no answer for Erin Greiner’s blast off her right foot with 2:20 to play in the first half that tied the game at 1-1. Earlier, Madison Root had tallied her 12th goal of the season, knocking in her own rebound off a corner, to give Ephrata a 1-0 lead.

“Jocelyn’s a great goalie,” Ephrata coach Wesley Deininger said. “She kept us in it but she’s never had to play in a game like that before. She showed up, but unfortunately we couldn’t get the help she needed.”

The Barons’ pressure eased a bit in the second half, but with 15:15 to go, Levy bent a 30-yard shot into the upper right-hand corner of the net to break the tie. Then a minute later, she positioned herself perfectly for Makeena Copley’s free kick into the box and banked the ball in off the back of her head.

“It felt so good,” Levy said of her first goal. “First half I always seem to have a rough half, but in the second half I got inspired.

“We’re such big rivals. It feels so good to win. It’s such an honor.”

Manheim Central outshot Ephrata 13-8, but also dominated the chances that just skirted wide or over the net.

Deininger credited what he described as a “much better” Barons team than the one the Mounts beat 3-2 earlier in the year for outplaying his team, but acknowledged that a nonleague win over Wilson on Monday night might have left his team flat for this one.

“We were excited to play the game, but we just didn’t have it,” he said.

“It’s one bad match out of 13. No need to panic.”