The girls' lacrosse teams from Penn Charter and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy split in their home/away series during the Inter-Ac League's regular season this spring. In postseason play the two squads would have the chance to meet a third time, working their way through the Pa. Independent Schools tournament to reach last Thursday's championship game at Cabrini University.

The Quakers of Penn Charter jumped out to a 4-0 lead and were still up by four goals at halftime, 7-3. In the second half, however, the Blue Devils of SCH held PC to a single goal, closing within one point of the Quakers twice in the last nine minutes. Despite being down one player for most of the final 18 minutes of the game due to a fourth yellow card infraction, Penn Charter hung on to win, 8-7, becoming the 2022 PAIS champion.

There was no Indy Schools tournament in 2020 or 2021 due to COVID-19, but last year the Inter-Ac League arranged its own postseason playoffs. A remarkable season for Penn Charter which had seen the team win the official league title (decided by regular-season records) and appear in the top 20 in national polls ended on a disappointing note. The Quakers lost to Agnes Irwin in both their final regular-season contest and in the Inter-Ac tournament finals.

"This year we had more ups and downs during the season," observed Charter senior Charlotte Hodgson, a Norwood Fontbonne Academy graduate who is headed to Harvard University. "It shows how amazing a team we are that we were able to pull through at the end."

Penn Charter had finished second in the Inter-Ac with a record of 9-3, while SCH, with an 8-4 mark, tied for third with Agnes Irwin. The champion was actually Episcopal Academy, which lost one game to Springside Chestnut Hill to finish with an 11-1 record.

However, a work/study program invovling Episcopal seniors caused the Churchwomen to forego the PIAS tournaments in both girls' lacrosse and softball (they had tied for the league softball title with SCH).

For the postseason tourney in lacrosse, Penn Charter was seeded first, Irwin second, and SCH third.

During the Inter-Ac League campaign, PC had lost twice to EA and once to SCH, while the Blue Devils split with both EA and PC but lost twice to Agnes Irwin. The PAIS tourney gave SCH a chance to play the Irwin Owls a third time.

A 12-2 victory over sixth-seeded Mercersburg Academy in the quarterfinal round moved the Devils into a semifinal contest against Irwin, which had defeated number seven Germantown Friends, 20-4. SCH had lost its league opener to the Owls, 12-9, but in the rematch SCH succumbed by a single goal, 11-10.

Head coach Noelle Powell said that the Blue Devils had experimented with some unproven player configurations late in the regular season, with suboptimal results.

For the playoffs, she said, "We went back to our strong and steady and tested line-up. Each game against Agnes we got closer and began to figure them out. We had to make sure our slide packages (on defense) were intact for Agnes Irwin, and then also for Penn Charter."

On the road at Irwin last Tuesday, Springside trailed by a goal at halftime but pulled out a 9-8 victory to reach the PAIS finals. Junior Emma Bradbury's fifth goal of the game, assisted by sophomore Alex Reilly, locked in the final score with under three-and-a-half minutes remaining.

Reilly scored two goals of her own, as did her sister Cece, a senior who'll play at Louisville. A dozen saves were recorded by All-American senior goalie Lucy Pearson, a future member of the Stanford Cardinal.

Penn Charter had moved through the other half of the tournament bracket with greater ease, starting out with a 16-7 win over Germantown Academy, the eighth seed. Charter then took down number four Hill School, 16-6, in the semifinals. Here, seniors Maddie Shoup (University of Colorado) and Darcy Felter (North Carolina) led the attack with seven and four goals, respectively.

In Thursday's championship game, the opening draw between SCH's Bradbury and Quakers junior Gracie Shoup (Maddie's sister) produced a ground ball that was scooped up by Hodgson. This led to PC's first goal late in the first minute, fired by junior Bea Buckley off of a free position.

Just 11 seconds later, though, Charter received its first yellow card.

Less than four minutes in, PC led 2-0 thanks to a picturesque transition sequence of long passes. Hodgson sent the ball out of the defensive end to Felter in the midfield, and she hit Maddie Shoup racing toward the arc. Shoup scored again two minutes later, earning a free position on the left side and crossing the front of the goal before launching her shot.

SCH now called time-out with 19:02 still remaining in the first half. When play resumed, PC once again controlled the ball and went up on attack. The Blue Devils' Pearson turned aside a shot by Charter junior Alex Glomb, but the Quakers got the rebound and Hodgson scored to make it 4-0 with 17:26 on the clock.

Many of the Penn Charter players are aware of Pearson's prowess not only from playing games against SCH, but also from playing alongside her in club lacrosse competition. Early in the final, the Quakers made sure they were getting in close and placing their shots well. As Hodgson put it, they relied on finesse rather than power.

The Blue Devils needed to slow their descent without delay, and they got on the board at 16:36 when Cece Reilly passed the ball from the rear of the cage on the right to set up a marker by Bradbury out front. The junior scored again a minute-and-a-half later off of a free position, taking a sort of sidearm wind-up and then nailing a shot to the top left corner.

Less than two minutes later, Buckley scored for PC from in front of the right post, receiving a feed from behind by Felter. An SCH response came within 20 seconds, with Alex Reilly rambling down the middle of the field, angling right, and then shooting into the far side of the cage.

The Quakers went back up by three when Felter fed the ball directly over the middle of the crossbar from behind, earning an assist as Hodgson cashed in. When Hodgson picked up a yellow card with a little under nine minutes left in the half, PC got possession and held the ball until the penalty ticked away.

Charter's junior goalie, Kayla Joyce, stopped a free position shot later on, and Pearson did the same at the other end. On another free-po for PC, Gracie Shoup converted with 2:17 remaining, and the 7-3 score stood until halftime.

Watching her team fall behind in the opening phases of the game, SCH mentor Powell observed "We were hesitant. We needed to play to win, and in the second half we started to embody that mentality."

PC's Joyce denied a shot by the Blue Devils' Bradbury in the second minute of the new half, but there was still some bad news for Penn Charter early on. The Quakers acquired their third yellow card of the game; one more and they'd be a player short for the duration.

SCH saw a shot by sophomore Cortney Neverosky saved, but on the subsequent clear by the Quakers the Blue Devils picked off the ball. A long pass found Cece Reilly close to the goal, and she cut the PC lead down to three points, 7-4. Just after that, Charter was slapped with its fourth yellow card, and would have just 11 players on the field for the last 18 minutes and 22 seconds.

Joyce made a save on the resulting free-position shot, and Penn Charter called time out. The Quakers came back out arranged in a zone and would play that way the rest of the game, even when SCH penalties evened things up for a spell.

Overall though, PC seemed more impatient in the second half, netting the aforementioned penalties and making some ill-advised drives that yielded low-percentage shots.

"I think we were up by a few goals and we wanted to keep scoring," Hodgson said. "We got too excited with the ball - we needed to focus more on pacing ourselves and getting longer possessions."

Springside Chestnut Hill continued to pare down the PC lead. With 10:48 remaining, Bradbury made good on a free position opportunity from the middle of the arc, and two minutes later she came from behind the cage on the left, scoring to make it a one-goal affair, 7-6.

That score remained on the board for a few minutes and then Penn Charter, in possession of the ball behind the SCH goal, called time-out. Play restarted back near the endline with the ball in the stick of Maddie Shoup. The senior fought her way around to the front of the cage and fired the eventual game-winning goal with 4:20 on the clock.

Not long after that, the Blue Devils got loose on a breakaway with a long pass to a wide-open Cece Reilly, but Joyce stopped the senior's shot. SCH kept the ball, though, and sophomore Madison Freeman found the back of the net with 3:43 to go. The Devils were back within one point of the leaders.

Off the next draw, the ball ended up with Charter's Hodgson and the Quakers spread out to drain the clock. Desperate to get the ball back, the Blue Devils received a yellow card with 1:19 remaining and were handed another with 43 seconds to play. At the very end, it was Penn Charter which would have the numerical advantage, and the PAIS title.