Lady Mounts into Semifinals

By admission, Ephrata senior midfielder Kiersten Doutt has been pretty sick this week. It’s something, she shared, that has been going around Ephrata.

Saturday morning she rallied to rally the Section Two champion Mountaineers (14-4) to a 2-1, double- overtime victory over Cocalico in the quarterfinals of the 2022 Lancaster- Lebanon League girls soccer playoffs. She scored a pair of goals, her 14th and 15th of the year, in the 72nd and 107th minutes, to turn back a determined effort by the Eagles, who had topped Ephrata 3-2 Wednesday in a nonleague contest.

“We’d just had a game Tuesday and we were all very tired,” Doutt said. “We didn’t come out our best Wednesday (and) that meant a lot to us.”

Carrying that memory over to Saturday, the Mounts brought pressure from the opening tap with 11 opportunities, two corners and four shots on goal in the first half. The Eagles (12-5-1), runners-up in Section Three, bent but did not break as their midfield backchecked, the defensive four swarmed to the ball and keeper Madison Rogers (1.35 GAA, 78.1 save percentage) made three saves to keep it a 0-0 game at halftime.

With the intermission to talk it over and make adjustments, the Eagles took the lead 17 minutes into the half. On their fifth opportunity of the half, Addisyn Martin (17 goals, 8 assists) sent the ball to Chloe Martin, whose shot deflected off keeper Alyssa Wingenroth’s hands and into the back of the net.

It was the 12th goal allowed in 15 games for Wingenroth, who righted the ship after a grizzly first three games where she allowed 13 goals.

“She has gotten so much better, day by day,” Mounts coach Wes Deininger said. “A lot of that has to do with our defense. At the beginning of the season we were kind of shaky and made some bad choices. Once we settled in, things got better.”

Ten minutes before their goal, however, the Eagles suffered a significant injury as senior wing defender and co-captain Natalie Sauder got spiked on the foot and did not return.

Mounts attacking midfielder Emily Weidner, the No. 2 scorer in the league, was a constant threat to change the outcome of the game, touching the ball in the offensive third seven times in the first half and 20 times for the game.

With the Eagles just under nine minutes from advancing, Weidner got loose in a wide-open offensive third as the Eagles’ defense broke down. “We got ourselves out of shape a little bit,” said Eagles coach Dan Hogan said, “and they had a nice little finish there.”

Playing down the left side, Weidner crossed to Doutt, camped in the 6-yard box. Doutt tapped it home to tie the match.

In the first of two 15-minute golden goal overtimes, off Anna Bernhard’s corner kick service, Cocalico missed a golden, golden-goal opportunity when Wingenroth saved Addy Martin’s shot. The rebound surprised Kaitlyn Hurst at the right post and she misfired on the potential game-winner.

“It’s such a bang-bang play,” Hogan said in Hurst’s defense. “You just don’t know where the ball is going to go, and all of a sudden it’s on your foot.”

Having dodged that bullet, the Mounts came out in the second OT with renewed vigor. Two minutes in, Weidner sent a shot from the right wing that Rogers made a spectacular leaping save on, snaring the ball as it rose to the top of the net.

With 3:33 to play before penalty kicks would be in effect, in a near reverse image of Doutt’s first goal, albeit with a tighter window, Weidner played down the right side crossing to Doutt as she filled the center of the box.

“Emily’s great through ball got through the defenders,” said Doutt, “and I was in the perfect position for it to get that one touch in.”

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