Penn Charter's girls remained undefeated and stood alone atop the Inter-Ac League lacrosse standings after a pair of big wins last week. The Quakers (7-0-1, 4-0) hosted local rival Springside Chestnut Hill Academy on Tuesday, handing the Blue Devils their first loss with a convincing 22-6 decision. On Friday PC travelled to the Academy of Notre Dame, always a tough place to play. They trailed 6-5 at one stage in the first half, but were in front at halftime (8-6) on their way to a 13-8 victory.

Head coach Colleen (Magarity) Kelly felt the team played near peak level against SCH, but not as well at Notre Dame.

After Friday's match she remarked, "I felt we were a little flat. Our M.O. is that we're fast and we push the transition and score off that. That part of our game was missing today, and we didn't have a great shooting day. Even so, I was proud of how our players found other ways to pull this out. We came up with some big saves and our defense did a good job handling the ball out of transition and connecting."

Going into last week, a number of Inter-Ac teams were vying for supremacy. Agnes Irwin had taken both Penn Charter and Notre Dame into overtime before losing, and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy had beaten Notre Dame by one goal in regulation play.

Because of the closeness of all these games, a rip-roaring match was expected between Charter and SCH last Tuesday, but that's not the way it turned out. The Quakers charged ahead from the get-go and led 11-3 at halftime before sealing a 22-6 victory. Seniors Kaylee Dyer and Mia Ferraro (a Norwood Fontbonne Academy alum) blasted in six goals apiece, and two goals each came from juniors Darcy Felter, Charlotte Hodgson (another NFA grad), and Maddie Shoup. Shoup controlled seven center draws, and senior Jamie Kubach made seven saves in goal while sophomore Kayla Joyce made two.

Coach Kelly has been slitting halves between the two keepers.

She observed, "Jamie has that experience of playing for three years behind Hayley Hunt [a five-year varsity player now at Stony Brook University], and Kayla is young and energetic and really into it. They both compete well in practice; they push each other and also support each other."

In another Tuesday tilt, prior results augured towards a Notre Dame win at Germantown Academy, but the Patriots weren't having it. They surprised the Irish by prevailing in the bout, 16-15. Norwood alum Elise Smigiel, a senior, led the way for GA with eight goals. Sophomore Mia Raven had a hatrick for the winners, and freshman Emma Goodwin scored two goals. Sophomore Taylor Weiss made seven saves in goal for the Pats.

Penn Charter received some bad news the following day concerning one of its most potent attackers. Ferraro, who has signed with the University of Southern California, became part of a partial COVID-19 quarantine at PC, and would not be available until near the end of April.

Taken together, all this information didn't make it easy to forecast what would occur at Notre Dame on Friday, and the Irish, psyched up for their Senior Day as well as the game, gave Penn Charter stiff resistance.

Early on, it looked as though the Quakers were on another unstoppable roll as they opened the scoring and then held a 4-1 lead a dozen minutes into the match. Just two minutes in, Dyer scored from about four meters out off of a feed from Hodgson, then junior Lane Murray came from behind the cage to make it 2-0 just a minute later.

Starting in goal, Kubach made one save in open play, then stopped a low free position shot by AND. The Irish were able to find the net after PC lost a player due to a yellow card; senior Megan McNeill converted off a free position with 16:11 left in the first half.

Three minutes later, the Quakers were up 4-1. Receiving a pass from senior defender Maggie Turner in transition, Felter twisted past several Irish players to score PC's third goal. Next, Hodgson scored on a low shot off of a free position on the center hash mark.

The visitors would not just cruise on to victory from there, though. Notre Dame seized its firs lead of the day with a 4-0 burst as the clock in the first half ticked down from 11:56 to 9:24. The run began and ended with markers by sophomore Ava Bleckley, and McNeill and senior Cat Leary scored in between.

At the far end of the field, about a minute-and-a-half after AND went up 5-4, a free position shot by Penn Charter was blocked and the ball remained on the ground not far from the crease. Sophomore Beatriz Buckley eventually scooped it up and scored to bring PC even at 5-5. The Quakers would have gone back in front soon after that if not for a Notre Dame save by senior Quinn Sullivan on a shot near the crossbar by PC's Dyer.

Instead, with 6:16 on the clock, Notre Dame took the lead one last time on a sort of sidearm sling from the right side by junior Katie Onderdonk.

One minute later, Shoup drove in from out in the flat on the left to make it 6-6.

Two days earlier, Felter had been named Mid-Atlantic Player-of-the Week for her efforts in PC's victories over Irwin and Manheim Central High School on April 7 and April 10. If anyone still needed to be convinced about her prowess, they now saw further evidence of the North Carolina recruit's abilities.

First, she struck with just under three minutes to go in the first half to push Penn Charter ahead for keeps. In the final minute, she made good on a free position from the left side of the arc to give the visitors an 8-6 halftime lead.

At the break, Kelly now felt that her ballclub was moving in the right direction.

"We told them we just needed to play our game and stay controlled," she related, "and not get caught up in their emotion if they got a little momentum. We were able to stay composed and put a couple in the back of the net to create more of a gap."

After the break, the Darcy Show continued; Felter proceeded to deposit the first two goals of the second half.

First, she received a pass from Dyer when both players were behind to goal, then she emerged out front on the right side to score 47 seconds into the new period.

When Notre Dame took the play to the other end, Joyce, who had relieved Kubach for the start of the second half, mad a nice stop on a bounce shot by Irish senior Dani Falcone. A few minutes later, Felter carried the ball out of the defensive half and kept on going to score with 20:35 left in the game. Charter was now up 10-6.

Felter began to play with the varsity when she was in eighth grade, and Magarity summed up, "She's awesome. I can't take her off the field because she does everything so well on offense, on defense, and in the midfield."

Felter and Hodgson take the center draws for PC. Whichever one is not in the center circle is ready to break down the wing, with Maddie Shoup on the other side.

"They work very well together," Kelly said. "You really saw that in the Springside game, when I thought we pushed the transition very well. I would put our midfield group up against anybody's."

At Notre Dame, the home team's first point of the second half came from Onderdonk with 18:49 on the clock, but PC would then step up to its largest lead of the day with back-to-back goals. Felter fed the ball from behind to earn an assist on a goal by Buckley, then Shoup, reset after one free position, found the net the second time around. Notre Dame called time-out, now trailing 12-7 with 13:27 remaining.

At this stage, not even halfway through the second period, the scoreboard's work was largely done.

Part of this was due to a stalwart performance in the PC goal by Joyce. Notre Dame did add one more point with 11:55 to go, when Bleckley scored her third goal of the day. Just before that, though, Joyce had turned aside a free-position bounce shot, and just after the goal she made a stop on a wide-open shooter out to her right.

The sophomore foiled another Irish attacker on a low free-po shot with six-and-a-half minutes left, and later stopped a ball shot by AND's Falcone after she romped down two-thirds of the field to approach the cage. Another Notre Dame attempt hit a post, and on several free-positions down around the two-minute mark, Notre Dame still couldn't guide the ball into Charter's inner chamber.

Kelly noted that in the PC defensive unit, "Our three veterans, Ava Coyle, Maggie Turner [both seniors], and Grace Turner [a junior] are fantastic, and then there's Gracie Shoup, who starts on defense and then shifts to the midfield to get some more legs up there. They communicate well, their positioning is good, and they really stand out with their strength and stature."

Grace Turner, along with Felter and Murray, joined the varsity while still in eighth grade.

Earlier, with 7:56 showing, the 13-8 final score was locked in by Dyer, who cut laterally from the left and came across the face of the goal to shoot. AND's Quinn denied Hodgson with a bit over three minutes left, and with just over a minute left she also repulsed a shot by Gracie Shoup, Maddie's freshman sister.

Felter vacuumed the rebound of that attempt though, and the Quakers controlled the ball for most of the remaining seconds until the final horn. Felter finished with a game-high five goals, and goalies Kubach and Joyce logged six and five saves, respectively.

Countless people have heard or read the "band of brothers" speech delivered by Shakespeare's Henry V. The real King Henry V, the hero of Agincourt, addressed his troops in a more plainspoken fashion: "“As you know, the fortunes of war vary: but if you desire a good outcome, you must keep your courage intact.”

The day after the Notre Dame match, the Quakers had their fortitude put to the test when they travelled to Berwyn to play Conestoga High School.

The Pioneers were ranked number one and Penn Charter was number two in the Philly Lacrosse area rankings, and in US Lacrosse Magazine's national poll on April 12, Conestoga was ninth and PC was 23rd.

Still playing without Ferraro, Charter went down 0-4 and trailed 8-3 at halftime. Conestoga garnered the first goal of the second period for a six-point advantage, but then Penn Charter began to rally.

The Quakers caught up and then pulled ahead late in the match on a strike by Hodgson. The teams were tied at the end of regulation, and after two overtime sessions failed to produce a winner, the teams called it a draw at 13-13.

Felter and Maddie Shoup finished with four and three goals, respectively, Dyer and Murray had two goals apiece, and Hodgson and Gracie Shoup each scored once. Joyce had four saves, and Kubach turned in two.

As for the national ranking, Coach Kelly said, "I think I've only mentioned it once; I don't want us to focus on that stuff. What I get out of it is that it's a recognition of the hard work our girls have put in to get where they are. This team didn't just appear out of nowhere; it was built year-by-year, and a lot of people have made contributions to that."