| Saturday, Oct. 29, 2016, TRIB-LIVE
It takes a perfect game to beat a champion.
The fourth-seeded Fox Chapel girls soccer team played a perfect 74 minutes Saturday afternoon at Mars before Norwin midfielder Alexis Kendor spotted Emily Harrigan for a give-and-go, and Harrigan buried the winning goal past Fox Chapel goalkeeper Kate Feczko to upend the Foxes, 1-0, and send No. 1 Norwin to the WPIAL Class AAAA championship game.
“We decided to really go full force the last 10 minutes of the game,” Norwin coach Lauren Czapor said.
“We knew we could do it with the score (tied), and we knew all it would take was one goal.”
Norwin established its speed from the onset of the match, but once Fox Chapel (15-6) settled down and found its rhythm, it proved to be all last year’s WPIAL Class AAA champions could handle.
Both teams played the ball in the middle of the field for much of the first half. Norwin’s lone scoring opportunity came with little more than a minute remaining in the first half.
The Knights (19-0-1) managed to drive the ball deep for a good a look, but Lexie Kolano’s shot sailed high, bouncing off the football crossbar out of play.
“Fox Chapel did a really nice job of using the middle of the field and playing the ball in the air,” Czapor said. “We needed to calm down, get the ball on the ground to get into our style of play.”
The match was up for grabs for most of the second half. Fox Chapel continued to drive the ball deep into Norwin territory, but goalkeeper Sam Wexell and the Knights’ defense stepped in to thwart any Fox Chapel threats.
Fox Chapel had its opportunities, but passes to players who would have had open shots went too long or short, slowing the attack. Wexell finished the match with three saves to post her third straight shutout in the playoffs.
“We played as hard as we could,” Fox Chapel coach Peter Torres said. “In the second half, we had several good chances on goal, and it’s a matter of inches of us putting it in the goal, and it’s a matter of inches of us stopping a goal.”
With just over 10 minutes remaining in the match, Norwin’s frenetic style of play looked to cause the Knights to become a bit winded.
Fox Chapel had a chance to take the lead on a hard shot by forward Blair Echnat, but defender Emily Arnold stood in the way to prevent the score. But that bit of momentum and a chance to keep Norwin on the ropes ended when Harrigan blasted home the only one of Norwin’s six shots on goal Feczko couldn’t save.
“This team still has a lot of belief in themselves and one another,” Czapor said. “The record we have says a lot about the kind of girls we have on our team.”