There wasn’t much of a question about whether the Moon girls soccer team was going to be good last season.
It was more about whether the Tigers would be good enough.
“I thought in the summer that the kids had bought in and I thought that the year before was one of the best years we had ever had,” Moon coach Bill Pfeifer said. “We played some great teams, and I didn’t know for sure that the kids would still be motivated.”
It’s easy to see why.
Moon was coming off an incredible 2021 campaign that saw Pfeifer’s return to the program following a four-year hiatus culminate in a 2-0 victory over Conestoga in the PIAA Class 4A championship game at Hersheypark Stadium. The Tigers were 20-1-1 that year, only allowed five goals, posted 17 shutouts and did not allow a goal in the WPIAL playoffs.
It would have been easy for Moon to have a bit of a drop-off after such a triumphant season. Not only did they have to find a way back to the pinnacle mentally, but the Tigers had to do so knowing they wouldn’t have the opportunity to defend their title after the biennial PIAA realignment dropped the team into Class 3A for the next two years.
All the excuses were firmly in place for Moon to have a letdown. Instead, the Tigers had one of the best seasons in WPIAL history.
Moon (24-0-0) ran the table and had a perfect season while allowing only three goals all year as it wrapped up the campaign with both WPIAL and PIAA Class 3A championships. For their efforts, the Tigers have been named the 2022-23 Post-Gazette Girls High School Team of the Year. The award takes into consideration teams in all sports in the WPIAL and City League.
“They wanted to continue what was going on from the year before,” Pfeifer said. “Especially the seniors, they wanted to do this again.”
Moon certainly had the talent to repeat as three players — midfielder Kayla Leseck, her twin sister and forward Skyler and Post-Gazette Girls Soccer Player of the Year Hailey Longwell — all committed to play collegiately at Duquesne. But though the Tigers were the defending champions in a higher classification, they came into the season as something of an afterthought behind Mars.
And with good reason.
Mars came into the year as the three-time defending WPIAL and PIAA Class 3A champion riding a 63-game unbeaten streak.
Even with all the talent and experience the Tigers brought to the table, there was always the shadow of the Planets lurking on the Tigers’ horizon.
“I think it was more of an issue for everybody else than it was for us and for Mars,” Pfeifer said. “I had talked to (Mars coach) Blair (Gerlach), and we knew what everybody was saying. We were halfway through the season, and you don’t know if anybody is going to get hurt or go through a bad spell or, in the playoffs, if you’re going to find a goal.”
As it turned out, the two teams did not face each other during the regular season and when the playoff brackets were announced, Mars was the No. 1 seed and Moon No. 2.
Mars had to play a pair of 1-0 games against Penn-Trafford and Franklin Regional before a 4-1 win over Latrobe put the team into the final. By contrast, Moon had a relatively easy time in the tournament with a 9-0 win over Indiana, a 2-0 victory against Oakland Catholic and a 3-0 decision against Plum, a 2021 finalist, clinched a title shot.
By the time the two teams faced each other in the WPIAL Class 3A final at Highmark Stadium, Mars had run its unbeaten streak to 80 games (78-0-2). Neither team had allowed a goal in the WPIAL tournament, and both had combined to give up just four all year.
“Our goal for the year wasn’t to play Mars,” Pfeifer said. “It was to get to the final and play whoever was on the other bench. If you set yourself up for playing only one team, you can very easily be disappointed.”
In the showdown, Mars blinked.
Moon senior midfielder Tessa Romah knocked a rebound past Mars goalkeeper Kate McEnroe 12:33 into the match for the only goal of the game as Moon came away with the 1-0 victory that ended Mars’ run.
Moon finished its WPIAL regular season and playoffs by outscoring its opponents 88-1 and riding a 17-game shutout streak.
“All 11 players on the team play defense, not just the back four or [junior goalkeeper] Serayah Leech, but people forget the year before, we only gave up four goals,” Pfeifer said. “It’s something we work on. It’s a mentality, and I tell the kids, ‘If we don’t give up goals, we can’t lose. We can tie 0-0, but we can’t lose.’ ”
Plum broke the shutout streak at 18 games in the PIAA Class 3A quarterfinals when it jumped out to a quick 1-0 lead on Moon. But the Tigers rebounded with a 4-1 win, then chased Mars in their rematch 2-0 to earn a spot in the state championship game against Upper Perkiomen at Eagle View Middle School in Mechanicsburg.
For the second time in the state playoffs, Moon gave up the opening goal. But unlike the game against Plum, Upper Perkiomen looked for the longest time like it would make Megan Cairns’ goal 5:28 into the match stand up.
But the Tigers sold out to tie the game and Longwell made it pay off when she redirected a Marina Mollica pass into the net to make it 1-1. Longwell then set up junior Sydney Felton for the game-winner in the 2-1 victory that gave the school its fifth state championship.
When the dust settled, Moon had ended its run on a 34-game winning streak and a 37-match unbeaten streak (36-0-1) since a 1-0 loss to Mt. Lebanon on Sept. 29, 2021. The Tigers were also the United Soccer Coaches No. 2-ranked team nationally behind Bearden out of Knoxville, Tenn.
“I give these kids a lot of credit that they buy into the system that we run,” Pfeifer said. “As many goals as you want to score, if you want to win championships, you have to do the little things, including all the aspects on the defensive side of the ball that not a lot of people want to do.”
Keith Barnes: kbarnes.pg@gmail.com and Twitter @kbarnes_pghsprt
First Published: July 5, 2023, 10:00 a.m.
