CHC soccer suffers Pickett's fate

By TOM UTESCHER

GETTYSBURG - Once again, the defenses at Gettysburg held. In 1863, the invaders had worn the grey and tan uniforms of the Confederacy; last Wednesday they were clad in the red and white of the Chestnut Hill College women's soccer team.

In the opening round of the NCAA Division III championship tournament, the Griffins experienced some of the same sense of futility as the doomed Confederate division commanded by General George E. Pickett, whose waves of infantry swept across a broad field south of town, broke against the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, and ebbed away.

In last week's confrontation, Chestnut Hill was felled by the Bullets of Gettysburg College, whose 11-0 triumph established a new NCAA record for margin of victory (the old mark was 9-0).

Gettysburg secured its postseason bid by winning the Centennial Conference, and came into the match with a 14-4-2 record. The Bullets had not appeared in the NCAA tourney since 1999.

It was the second year in a row that Chestnut Hill made the tournament; last year the Griffins lost a first-round game, 5-0, at Stevens Tech in Hoboken, NJ. As in 2003, the locals gained an automatic berth in the NCAA championships by winning the Atlantic Women's College Conference. With Wednesday's loss, Chestnut Hill ended its season with an overall record of 9-10.

The proverbial "one that got away" came back to haunt the Griffins during the contest. Gettysburg freshman Katie Myers, a suburban Baltimore native who'd been recruited by the Griffins, led the Bullets with four goals in Wednesday's contest. The offensive outburst gave her a total of 20 goals in the 2004 campaign, tying the single-season record at Gettysburg.

Setting another school record, with four assists for a new single-game standard, was senior Christina DiTucci, who also deposited a goal of her own. Junior Katie Ferraro scored twice for the winners, and four other players had single goals.

The only goal the Bullets would need for the victory went in the books just two minutes and 45 seconds into the encounter, thanks to the first of three DiTucci-to-Myers connections. Subsequent strikes by Myers and Ferraro spread the score to 3-0, and it was looking to be a long night for the Griffins, who struggled to push the ball across the midfield line. Late in the half the visitors survived a direct kick from just beyond the 18 and a header that rose a foot above the crossbar, and CHC was fortunate to only be down by three at the break.

Things would get much worse in the second half. What Gettysburg perceived as rough play on the part of Chestnut Hill led to heightened tension on the field and some verbal exchanges in the stands. Two CHC players were carded, and the Bullets, who already had the game well in hand, were now motivated to punish the Griffins.

Goals gushed onto the scoreboard; six markers in a 14-minute span jacked the score up to 9-0, equaling the previous NCAA record for lopsidedness in the postseason. Midway through this spree, Gettysburg sent in back-up goalie Allie Loeb to replace starter Kristin Short.

Facing a non-stop onslaught, Chestnut Hill's freshman keeper, Kelly Evans, registered 15 saves, and midfielder Meghan Smith showed exceptional hustle on defense to break up a number of Gettysburg forays down the left wing. Other than that, it wasn't easy to pick out the positives for a CHC squad that was outshot 44-0. Gettysburg tacked on two more goals in the final seven minutes as this unsavory affair crawled to a conclusion.

The Griffins weren't to blame for being hopelessly overmatched. At present, neither they nor any other AWCC team is ready to perform on the NCAA's postseason stage. Chestnut Hill had a long, long bus ride home during which to contemplate the ugly side of automatic tournament bids.

UPDATE - Gettysburg's season ended three days later with a 2-1 loss at the College of New Jersey.