Mules slip by Mounts in OT

As the clock wound down, with his team down a goal, Solanco girls soccer coach Matt Janssen encouraged the Golden Mules to keep pushing.

“You’re still in this!” he shouted.

“They have to believe it,” he said later, enjoying the feel of their 2-1 overtime victory over Ephrata in Lancaster-Lebanon League Section Two play. “And they do, and that’s the great thing about this team.”

Belief was rewarded with just over five minutes to play in regulation as senior striker Josie Janssen carried the ball deep into the left side of the box, battling a defender 1-on-1 all the way, before crossing the equalizer into the back right corner of the net for her 11th goal of the season.

“I honestly thought I was going to get called for a foul,” she said. “I was pushing up against (the defender), trying to get her to make a mistake. I saw my chance to just sneak a poke in there, and it worked.”

She wasn’t done.

With 2:36 to play in the first overtime she settled a ball from Emma House-keeper before sending it into the back of the net for her 12th goal, the game winner.

It seemed they were playing give-and-go on the play. “It was an unplanned one,” Josie Janssen said. “When you get to those moments, you don’t really know what’s going to happen. You just have to hope.”

It would be fair to say this was a statement victory for the Mules (4-0 L-L, 8-2 overall), who took sole possession of first place in Section Two.

“All season I kind of wanted to know where we were at,” Matt Janssen said. “Beating a quality team like Ephrata, playing tough the whole game kind of tells us … we’re for real this season.”

The teams battled through a scoreless first half and while the Mules controlled play in the midfield, they had little to show for it except the only shot on goal by either team, Josie Janssen’s header at the near post. While Ephrata (31, 4-2) didn’t have a SOG, the Mounts did have three corner kick opportunities.

“I felt comfortable,” Matt Janssen said, “and that was the message at halftime. Yes, they had some chances, but nothing too dangerous.”

He might’ve felt a little less comfortable had he known that nine of the 13 goals the Mounts had scored this year came in the second half of games.

Make that 10 of 14.

Playing down the right side with the kickoff Natalie Martin sent a sweet cross, right-to left, to Mya Curran. Curran sent the ball into the back of the net, 22 seconds into the half, for her second goal of the year.

“Our first halves have usually look the way they did tonight,” Mounts coach Wes Deininger shared. “We had some opportunities, but it just wasn’t quite clicking.

“We’ve had stretches in every game where we’ve been good, and stretches where we’ve been pretty bad. In other games we found a way to win. Tonight it hurt us.”

Nonetheless, they had the lead and it seemed, the deeper the game went, the larger that lead appeared. Until it didn’t.

With overtime a near certainty, Mounts senior midfielder Emily Weidner, who hit the post with a 30-yard free kick in the 51st minute, had one more chance to end it in regulation as she shot, pointblank, with 14 seconds left.

Mules keeper Kyleigh Murphy blocked the ball into the air, more self defense than intention, located it in the air and cradled it for the save.

“My first instinct was, I have to be a monster and get on this ball,” the junior keeper recalled. “Then it just kind of came down, I saw a light falling and I thought, ‘Oh, that must be the ball.’ I was surprised I even got my body on it.”

The save, her fourth of the game on six shots, gave her team a chance to win. A chance the Mules converted.

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