The damp weather last week persisted into the weekend at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, as Saturday's program of homecoming games began with an Inter-Ac League girls' soccer showdown between the host Blue Devils and their nearby rivals, the Quakers of Penn Charter.

SCH scored in the first eight minutes and led 3-0 at halftime, and although Charter got one goal back early in the second period and posed threats later on, the home team came away with a 3-1 victory.

Saturday's contest was the fourth league game for both teams. They'd both lost to Agnes Irwin, while SCH (3-1) had beaten Baldwin School and Germantown Academy and Penn Charter (0-3-1) had tied defending champion Episcopal Academy and had lost to the Academy of Notre Dame. After last weekend's match, the Blue Devils were 6-2 overall and the Quakers were 8-3-1.

At SCH, Penn Charter was missing two regular members of its four-player back line, juniors Cassidy McCusker and Lucy Sokoloff. McCusker was close to returning from a particularly nasty injury; she'd knocked heads with an Agnes Irwin player and opened a cut near her hairline that required numerous stitches.

Back during the summer, the Quakers faced the fact that they didn't have an experienced goalie who was ready for varsity duty. Sophomore Mia DiBenedetto, a starter on Charter's basketball team last winter, stepped into the breach. She's the daughter of the coach of the PC boys' soccer team, Bob DiBenedetto, who once coached at the old Chestnut Hill Academy.

The play was fairly even in the early minutes, with both teams sending long balls up from the defensive end to stimulate the offensive transition.

The first goal came off of a stoppage, though, as Cali Smith put the ball in play from the left side when Springside Chestnut Hill was awarded a corner kick. Striking the ball so it followed a shallow arc and dropped down approaching the far post, Smith found sophomore classmate Ella Thomson sealing off the play from the weak side. Thomson's header wiped the goose egg off the home side of the scoreboard with seven minutes and 44 seconds elapsed.

Five minutes later, Smith had the ball near the top of the offense and dished it to her right towards sophomore Alex de Beaulac. de Beaulac deposited a long shot into the far side of the cage to record the eventual game-winning goal.

Near the middle of the first period, Penn Charter freshman Alexis Regan lofted a corner kick from the right, but a header from the far side was off-target. Soon after that, an outside shot drilled from the right by the Quakers hit the outside of the net on the near side.

The Blue Devils picked up their insurance goal with 8:34 remaining in the first half. Ryleigh Bakley, yet another 10th-grader, initiated the play when she shot from the outside on the right wing. PC's DiBenedetto appeared to catch the bar a step inside the near post, but it squirmed out of her grasp and rolled toward the middle, where de Beaulac jabbed it into the net for her second goal of the day.

Blue Devils senior Zarin DeVeaux had put away some nice goals in previous games, but luck was not really with her on Saturday. In the last seven minutes of the first period, she had one shot carom off the crossbar and another bounce back off the right post. Halftime arrived with the score still 3-0.

Several days of rain had thoroughly wetted the artificial turf on SCH's Landreth Field, and since this took some of the normal bounciness out of the playing surface, it benefitted a ball-control approach to the game. In general, the Blue Devils made shorter passes than the Quakers. Once they got behind, most of the visitors' best scoring chances came on counter runs off of long balls.

Although SCH senior goalie Gracyn Lee-Torchiana and PC's DiBenedetto each made eight saves in the game, the Blue Devils' keeper made the more dramatic stops, since Penn Charter got off some very strong outside shots.

One of these attempts came just as the second half got underway, forcing 

Lee-Torchiana to make an exciting leaping save near the top left corner of the cage to keep the Quakers off the scoreboard.

The keeper's shutout did not last much longer, though, since Penn Charter kept up the attack and drew a call in the box that led to a penalty kick. Regan converted on the PK for the visitors, firing the ball just under the crossbar a little left of center. There was 35:28 still left to play.

Two SCH corner kicks failed to produce a shot, and on a PC counter after the second try Blue Devils senior back Lida Goloveyko deflected a promising shot.

Later on the Quakers took three corner kicks in a row from the left side as the Devils knocked the ball out over the endline on the first two. The third ball traveled too far past the right post to set up a viable shot.

Springside, in turn, was unable to increase its advantage through a pair of corner kicks in the late minutes of the game, but the Blue Devils still had a two-goal lead at the final horn.