Shady Side Acad­emy and Ellis School have played each other in a WPIAL field hockey cham­pi­on­ship match each of the past six years, so it wouldn’t be out of the ques­tion for some of those meet­ings to be some­what akin.

This year, the Class 1A fi­nal be­tween the two was ee­rily sim­i­lar to their clash in 2018.

For the sec­ond time in a row the two teams played a score­less first half and the win­ning goal was soon af­ter the in­ter­mis­sion. And, just like 2018, it was Shady Side Acad­emy that came up with the clincher as ju­nior for­ward Camp­bell Wolfe scored on a tap-in from two feet away at 7:38 that gave the In­di­ans their sec­ond con­sec­u­tive ti­tle and 15th in school his­tory, 1-0, over the Tigers at Fox Chapel High School.

Oh, and the score was also the same as last sea­son.

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“We played them three times this sea­son and I told them, you can’t look at the scores of those first two games be­cause that won’t give you any in­di­ca­tion, and we knew we had a fight on our hands,” Shady Side Acad­emy coach Betsy Gorse said. “To their credit, they played their hearts out and they fought for 60 min­utes.”

Shady Side Acad­emy won, 3-0 and 4-0, in the reg­u­lar sea­son, but this time Ellis School never let the In­di­ans run away and hide. Soph­o­more goal­keeper Genna Barge made five crit­i­cal saves in the first half and, even on the win­ning goal, she was in po­si­tion to make the ini­tial save.

“Genna’s game was im­pec­ca­ble and all I asked her to do was keep it sim­ple,” Ellis School coach Amanda Rose said. “Their goal was nice. It was a nice one.”

And it was one Wolfe might not have had to touch at all.

Shady Side Acad­emy got the ball on a pen­alty cor­ner and the ball found its way to soph­o­more mid­fielder Jenny Wood­ings, who was set up on the door­step to the right of Barge. Wood­ings took the shot, but be­fore it drib­bled home, Wolfe pounced on it and ham­mered it in for the only goal of the match.

“That cor­ner was a cor­ner we work on a lot in prac­tice and it worked and there was a lot of team­work that went into that,” Wood­ings said. “I was look­ing to shoot it and my goal was to hit it into the net and my team­mate came in and put it in.”

Wolfe might have sto­len Wood­ings’ thun­der — and re­duced her po­ten­tial win­ning goal to an as­sist — but con­sid­er­ing how tightly the two teams were play­ing, she wasn’t tak­ing any chances.

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Mike White's high school sports chat transcript: 10.29.19

“I think it was there, but I fig­ured I might as well hit it in be­fore some­one else could get to it,” Wolfe said. “It felt so good. It felt so good get­ting one in so it wouldn’t go to over­time, and scor­ing it was in­sane be­cause ev­ery­body dreams about it.”

This is the 15th con­sec­u­tive year Shady Side Acad­emy or Ellis School won a WPIAL ti­tle in the low­est clas­si­fi­ca­tion. They did it from 2005-15 in Class 2A and, when the sport was ex­panded to three classes, the Tigers won the first two and the In­di­ans the past two in Class 1A.

Class 2A

All sea­son long the Penn-Trafford War­riors pre­pared for this game.

All the matches against Class 3A schools. All the bat­tles and tough losses to prime them for their one shot at re­peat­ing as Class 2A cham­pi­ons.

And in the end, it all paid off.

Junior mid­fielder Nina Bowl­ing tapped a trick­ler past Latrobe start­ing goal­keeper Marissa No­vak at 10:42 of the first half for the only tally Penn-Traf­ford needed as it cruised to its fourth con­sec­u­tive WPIAL Class 2A ti­tle and fifth over­all with a 4-0 victory.

Be­cause only four teams are clas­si­fied as Class 2A, all qual­i­fied for the play­offs be­fore the first match of the sea­son. Wood­land Hills did not par­tic­i­pate in the post­sea­son, which gave the War­riors a bye into the fi­nal.

That meant Penn-Traf­ford had nearly two weeks since its most recent match, but it didn’t show as the team took the play to Latrobe from the start.

Bowl­ing’s goal also took away much of the mys­tery about the fin­ish, and any doubts that remained dis­ap­peared at 18:38 when ju­nior Emma Lit­tle made it a 2-0 match. The War­riors put it away 48 sec­onds into the sec­ond half when ju­nior mid­fielder Ally­son Doran, who scored both Penn-Traf­ford goals in last year’s victory over the Wild­cats, popped home her third in two years to make it a three-goal ad­van­tage, then added one with 1:02 left to close it out.

First Published: October 30, 2019, 2:24 a.m.