Category: Soccer

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State High soccer follow-up

Ginger Woolridge’s seven game shutout streak came to an end as Norwin HS scored on this play to defeat State High 1-0 to eliminate the Little Lions, as they are called, from the PIAA playoffs.

A fraction of a second after this picture was taken, Ginger collided with the other State High girl (in white) which left the goal wide open for the Norwin girl to score. Game story here.

Ginger was also the centerpiece of a game preview article in the paper on Saturday that talked about the 600+ minute scoreless streak that she had going.

Most of the State High team, including Ginger, will be back next year and they expect to contend for the State title.

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Had to root against my old high school (sort of)

Now that Central Bucks is split into three school districts, does anyone know where Chalfont kids go?

Tuesday night, the State College high school girls soccer team met Central Bucks South in the state soccer playoffs. State High’s goalie is my buddy Randy Woolridge’s youngest daughter Ginger. The game was played at Central Mountain HS which is about 40 miles from here so I headed over to watch it.

Ginger had a great game including a spectacular save with just minutes to go that preserved a 1-0 win for State High. It was her seventh straight shutout. They will now face a Pittsburgh area school in the state quarterfinals at 1 pm on Saturday. The game is in Hollidaysburg PA about 45 miles from here at 1 pm and I’m going to try to squeeze it in.

I say squeeze it in because the day is a very full one. Penn State hosts #4 Syracuse at 11:30 am Saturday in the opening round of the NCAA Field Hockey Championships. Barring OT, the game will end about 1 PM and I’ll be able to rush to Hollidaysburg for the State High game. That game should end about 3 PM, which will give me just enough time to get home to watch the Penn State at Ohio State football game (I’ll miss the first 15 minutes but that just means I’ll be able to skip all the commercials during the first half as I use TiVo to catch up). Then I’ll rush over to Rec Hall to catch the PSU women’s volleyball team taking on Illinois in a huge match (Illinois defeated Penn State in a match earlier this year – PSU needs the win to reclaim first place in the Big Ten). I absolutely love the opportunity to catch all these sporting events.

Note to Gary and Charlotte: The Big Ten Network will have the PSU/Illinois match on live at 6PM Saturday. Should be a good one.

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e-Boy Gets a Job

Big soccer news out of the state of Utah. While his Dad was helping lead the Judge Memorial Girl’s soccer team to a state title, Elliot scores a full-time gig with a Major League Soccer Club. Real (pronounced “ray-al”, like the Madrid club) Salt Lake has hired the boy to work in their Marketing/Communications Department. Hey that’s two Fall’s (Gary) working for a major league team…though the Yankees and oft-losing RSL exist on opposite ends of the sports spectrum.

RSL finished it’s third year here, and failed to make the playoffs again. Elliot had an internship this past season (April to Oct) and they loved having him…hired him first chance they got. His title is now Public Relations Coordinator – e-mail efall@realsaltlake.com He’ll stay in school and work part-time til the ’08 season starts. After he earns his degree (economics ) in May he starts full-time at the club.

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He’s pictured here holding up the Rocky Mountain Cup trophy, making the trip to Colorado where RSL beat the Rapids to win their annual competition.

Meanwhile, the Judge Memorial Girl’s team (I’m still assistant coach) startled the Utah high school scene by going on a blistering run through the playoffs – giving up just one goal in four games – to capture the state title. The team had begun the season 1-6, but turned things around and beat three number one seeds to win State. It’s our third state championship in six years.

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Not your average high school

Last night, I was chatting with Danny Morrissey, an UncleLar nephew and shooting guard for Penn State’s basketball team. Danny went to prep school at the Pendleton School in Bradenton FL. Pendleton is part of the IMG Academies, a world renown collection of training academies for youth athletes. Some of the academies you have undoubtedly heard of – the Nick Bollettieri Tennis Academy, the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, the Chris Evert Tennis Academy.

Pendleton creates a unique educational environment where kids go to class in the morning at the prep school, then attend training sessions at one of the academies in the afternoon. As Danny described it “This was not your typical high school. Taurean Green (starting guard for two time national champion Florida) was my point guard, Maria Sharapova (world renown model/tennis player) was a classmate of mine, and Freddie Adu (soccer phenom) lived in the dorm room below me.”

Taurean Green

Maria Sharapova

Freddie Adu

All of a sudden my high school experiences seemed quite boring.

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Four Nations Soccer Tournament

An UncleLar niece will be making her overseas debut with the US National Soccer team in a few hours (3AM Friday to be exact). Joanna Lohman, who was a two time Hermann Award finalist (Soccer’s equivalent to the Heisman Trophy) while she was at Penn State, plays midfield for the US. J-Lo, as she is not so surprisingly known, has played in seven matches for the US team here in the states but this is her first trip overseas with the team.

The Four Nations Tournament is being held in Guangzhou China and is considered a warm-up for the World Cup later this year. The #2 ranked in the world US women open the tournament against the #1 world ranked German squad. They will follow this match up with one against England on Sunday, then face the host Chinese on Tuesday.

Here’s a photo of J-Lo with the we’re-in-China obligatory ping pong pose (she’s the one on the right)

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more Fall sports news


Greetings. Here in Utah the soccer playoffs have begun. The Judge Memorial Bulldogs face a difficult task of returning to the State Championship game. Last year we were runner-ups to Park City (who are currently ranked number 12 in the country). We were State Champs in 2002 and 2003. Park City are the heavy favorites this year, they are led by a midfielder who is on the U-19 national team.

This year has been rougher than the last few. Three starters have gone down with season ending ACL injuries. Our second leading scorer broke her arm last week, and her doctor’s say she’s done for the year. Natalie has been plattooned at center mid, forward or outside mid…and it’s been difficult for her to win a starting spot despite the injuries. The head coach has started a youth movement, the freshman and sophomores are in many cases as good or better than the upper classmen. Last night Nats played about half the game…where her great passing skills were on display in our first round victory (5 to 1 over Millard). But this weekend we travel five hours to St. George for our quarterfinal matchup against an unbeated Dixie squad. Two more wins and we make it to the finals, which would mean a likely rematch with the hated Park City team.

We’ll keep you posted.

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Huge win for Penn State soccer last night

I got to watch Penn State’s men’s soccer team take on Indiana on national TV (Fox Soccer Channel) last night. PSU has had a terribly disappointing season to date. They were a preseason Top 25 team but fell out of the national rankings with a 2-6-2 start. Indiana has had their normal fine season. They are the two time defending national champions and had been #1 ranked up until last week when they slipped to #5 as a result of two ties. However, they were still undefeated and the game was being played in Indiana so Penn State was a huge underdog.

PSU pulled out a 2-1 win on a Golden Goal six minutes into overtime.

My buddy David Gray, whom you may remember from my post on the dummy blog, had his moment in the sun when the national TV cameras clearly caught him throwing an elbow at an Indiana player (the ref saw it too and it earned David a yellow card).

This was PSU’s second win over a ranked opponent in 10 days (they beat #6 Maryland here in State College last week) and hopefully will propell them to a successful B10 campaign.