Shady Side Academy was optimistic about its chances of playing in the PIAA Class 1A finals for the first time in school history.

After all, the team was coming off the a 4-11 victory against District 5 champion Forbes Road that had made it the first WPIAL school ever to make it into the state semifinals in the lowest classification.

Then the snow came.

“It was, by far, the coldest game I’ve coached,” Shady Side Academy coach Betsy Gorse said. “The winds, we just had gusts coming at you, the girls on the sidelines were bundled up with their hoods pulled tight and needed time to get their stuff off if they had to get in and, it was the same for both teams, but no one was expecting this.”

Shady Side Academy gave it a go, but in the end, the team couldn’t muster enough as Jenny Woodings scored the only goal in a 3-1 loss to District 3 champion Greenwood Tuesday at Lower Dauphin Middle School.

“I would have loved to have played them in normal weather. We traveled three-and-a-half hours and they traveled 50 minutes,” Gorse said. “We got there at 3:30 p.m. which would have been plenty of time to get out and move your legs about, but there were no locker rooms. They had to stay on the bus just to stay warm and out of the elements longer than necessary at that point, but I’m not going make excuses, it’s November and that’s how it is.”

It’s almost like the weather wanted to throw an extra added challenge in for Shady Side Academy in its quest to become the first WPIAL school in any classification to play in a state championship match.

Since field hockey became an official PIAA-sanctioned sport in 1974, no team from District 7 had ever played in the finals. No Class 1A, or Class 2A team for that matter, had even pushed through to the semifinals, which made Shady Side Academy’s win against Forbes Road all the more remarkable.

Beating District 3 teams, however, has been a nightmarish proposition.

In fact, the most recent time Shady Side Academy had won a state tournament match prior to this season was in 2011 when it defeated Belleville Mennonite, 3-0, before losing to District 3 champion Palmyra by the same score in the quarterfinals.

Still, many of these matches have been blowouts against WPIAL schools, so a close loss to a District 3 champion could be a sign of progress.

“It was 3-1 and that was the best showing for Western Pa. so I think, every year, we’re making the strides to get there and breaking through,” Gorse said. “I told the girls, they’re probably not taking us very seriously because of the history of District 7 and that’s just how it is, but we keep getting closer, but the eastern schools are just stacked.”

Class 3A

Pine-Richland coach Donna Stephenson was sure she had the team that would finally break through and become the first WPIAL school to make it to the Class 3A state finals.

Like Shady Side Academy, though, Pine-Richland had to fight not only history, but a snowstorm on the road at Central Dauphin where the team suffered a 5-0 loss to another herd of Rams to end its season against the District 3 champion in the semifinals.

No WPIAL team has even won a state tournament match in the highest classification — not including pigtail or play-in matches — since Vincentian when it defeated State College, 2-1, in 1987.

Only one WPIAL school had previously made it into the Class 3A semifinals and that was in 1974, the first year of field hockey, when Fox Chapel defeated Delaware Valley, 3-2, in overtime in the quarterfinals and lost to eventual state champion Elizabethtown, 1-0, in the semifinals.

Because of adjustments in the PIAA bracket format, only district champions qualified for the state finals and, because of that, when Pine-Richland won the WPIAL title, it got an automatic berth in to the semifinals.

Class 2A

Penn-Trafford was in the tournament for the fifth consecutive year, but faced a somewhat familiar foe as it took on District 4 champion Selinsgrove in a quarterfinal match. It was the third time in the past five seasons the Warriors had seen the Seals, but like those other two matches in 2016 and 2017, they took a tough loss.

This time, however, it was much closer as Penn-Trafford dropped a 3-1 decision in the quarterfinals. It was the furthest Penn-Trafford had ever been in the state playoffs.

First Published: November 20, 2020, 11:15 a.m.