Rockets shown the door
MEADVILLE — Jence Rhoads had a clear shot and put her right foot into the soccer ball.
It faded to the right, soaring just outside the post.
The Slippery Rock High junior slumped to her knees on the turf and lowered her forehead to the ground.
It typified the kind of day it was for both the Slippery Rock girls and boys soccer teams in the District 10 Class AA playoffs Wednesday at Meadville.
Harbor Creek 6, Slippery Rock girls 0.
North East 7, Slippery Rock boys 0.
It was not what the two teams expected. They were both No. 1 seeds. The boys team was 17-1-2. The girls team hadn't lost since mid-September and was 16-4 and undefeated for the first time in Region 1.
And both had high hopes that this would be the year that they would topple the Goliaths from Erie.
The Goliaths had other plans.
"We just came up a touchdown short," said Slippery Rock coach Anthony Buzard, wryly.
Neither Slippery Rock team truly was ever in their contests.
Just 1 minute, 5 seconds into the girls match, Harbor Creek's Lindsay Meyer scored.
Then came two more goals in the span of seven minutes by Kara Prokopchak and Jackie Wegelin midway through the first half and the rout was on.
"It is very disappointing," said Slippery Rock coach Blair Gantz. "I did think this was going to be our year. Harbor Creek is a very good team. Did I think we played our best soccer today? No, I don't. We didn't show up whatsoever."
Harbor Creek, the sixth seed in the playoffs, led 4-0 at the half and tacked on another goal just 19 seconds into the second half on the 43rd goal of the season by Taylor Hilinski.
Prokopchak then capped the scoring with her second goal of the match.
Slippery Rock did have chances. The Rockets were outshot only 17-9, but the Huskies made theirs count.
"The girls are good players; they just didn't show up today," Gantz said. "When (Harbor Creek) had their opportunities, they put it away. The ball was in their half a lot of the time. We just couldn't score. I told our players last week they weren't going to get that many opportunities."
The boys had more problems.North East outshot Slippery Rock 26-6 and controlled the action from the onset.The Pickers led 3-0 at the half and strung together their last three goals in the span of two minutes midway through the second half to put the Rockets away."We really came in expecting to have a chance to get to the championship game," Buzard said. "They were just all over the place. We haven't seen an aggressive team like that in a long, long while."There weren't many bright spots on the field Wednesday, but there may be some in the future.Both teams were young. The Slippery Rock girls had just two seniors on the roster, Chelsea Fuller and Sonya Mamoozadeh, and neither was a starter.The Slippery Rock boys also had only two seniors, Joe Bryan, who recorded 13 shutouts as the Rockets goalkeeper, and Alex Fair."We'll lick our wounds and be disappointed," Buzard said. "We'll wake up tomorrow and we can look back and see we had a great season."Gantz can say the same."We still finished 14-0 in our conference," she said. "They did accomplish something."