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By STEVE SEMBRAT; For the Back Mountain Leader
Thursday, November 14, 1996 Page:
BERNVILLE — Two district champs down, one to go.
And if Lake-Lehman can complete this postseason hat trick, the Black
Knights will win their first PIAA Class AA field hockey championship.
Lehman goes for the gold at 10 a.m. Saturday when it takes on Gwynedd-Mercy
at Villanova University.
Gwynedd-Mercy, 19-3-2, is the District 1 AA champ, but facing a district
champ will be nothing new for the Black Knights. To reach the championship
game, Lehman defeated a pair of district champions in Lehighton and Lancaster
Mennonite.
Lehman defeated District 11 AA champ Lehighton 1-0 in a quarterfinal game
on Saturday at Nazareth High School.
Then on Tuesday, the Black Knights squeezed past District 3 AA champ
Lancaster Mennonite in a penalty stroke shootout. After two scoreless halves
and two scoreless overtimes, Lehman prevailed in the second set of strokes in
what will be recorded as a 1-0 victory.
The only team the Black Knights faced in the state playoffs that wasn’t a
district champ was Line Mountain, the District 4 AA runnerup. Ironically,
Lehman played its poorest game of the postseason in that 1-0 victory in a
first-round state game on Tuesday, Nov. 5. The Black Knights rebounded from
that sub-par performance with two dominating performances to reach the state
finals.
“They’ve played very, very well,” Lehman coach Jean Lipski said. “I get
nervous on the sidelines, but they stay so focused on the field.”
That focus has led to the type of play that has allowed the Black Knights
to pull out victories against some very tough opponents.
Lehman outshot Lehighton, 13-1, and produced the winning margin on Sara
Kasper’s goal with about 5 minutes left in that contest.
The Black Knights outshot Lancaster Mennonite, 18-5 (12-1 in regulation),
but didn’t produce a goal in regulation. Lehman, however, did pull out the
victory in the second round of a penalty stroke shootout.
“I can’t say enough about how much they’ve given up to get here,” Lipski
said. “They’ve given hours and hours of work.”
Coming into the season, goalkeeping figured to be a question mark for
Lehman. After all, the team graduated two quality seniors in Jonelle Elgaway
and Pam Rish. The heir apparent, junior Joanne White, only had junior varsity
experience. The whisper around the Wyoming Valley Conference was that you
could beat Lehman if you could get the ball to the cage.
White, though, has turned the position from a question mark into an
exclamation point with her postseason performance. She came up with some key
saves in Lehman’s first-round victory over Line Mountain. Then in Tuesday’s
semifinal game, she came up with three huge saves in the second round of a
penalty stroke shootout to help the Black Knights advance.
“She has spent countless hours working with (Lehman volunteer coach) Lynn
Coury on strokes,” Lehman senior midfielder Debbie White said of her younger
sister Joanne. “She has come a long way.”
Joanne White made a pair of diving saves on Lancaster Mennonite’s final two
shots of the shootout. Sandwiched in between was Debbie White’s goal, which
turned out to be the one that advanced Lehman to Saturday’s state championship
game.
“I have good feelings about it,” Joanne White said about Lehman’s
first-ever trip to the state championship game. “We can’t get cocky, but I
feel good about this.”
Lehman is the fourth team from the Wyoming Valley Conference and the second
from the Back Mountain to appear in a PIAA championship game.
Dallas made it to the Class AAA final in 1991, and lost to Emmaus, 1-0.
The other teams to go all the way were Wyoming Seminary (1987, lost to
Perkiomen Valley, 2-0) and Crestwood (1988, defeated Northwestern Lehigh, 2-1;
1983, lost to Springfield-Montco, 1-0).
The season is not over for eight Lehman seniors after Saturday’s state
championship game. They’ll all take part in Monday’s 14th annual Wyoming
Valley Conference Field Hockey Coaches Association College Classic, which
starts at 5 p.m. at Lackawanna County Stadium.
The purpose of the game is to give visiting college coaches a glimpse at
WVC seniors who are interested in playing collegiately. The North will play
the South first, followed by the East playing the West.
Lehman’s Debbie White, Kacy Ziomek, Adrienne Miroslaw, Mary Brislin and
Jeanette Thrash will play for the East, while Tiffany Van Scoy, Erin Snell and
Amanda Shission will play for the North.
Five Dallas players are also in the contest. Michele Molesky, Mary Ann
Selenski and Melanie Getz will play for the West, and Heather Wilt and Kelly
Killeen will play for the South.
From Tunkhannock, Sara Slocum, Sue Bullock and Jenise Pencek will play for
the West, while Lori Novajosky and Jessica Brooks will play for the South.
Wyoming Seminary’s Margaret Buonsante, a Shavertown resident, will play for
the South.
Monday’s game does not mark the end of the field hockey season, either.
Five Lehman players will be heading South for the Thanksgiving weekend to
play for the Pocono squad at the National Field Hockey Festival in West Palm
Beach, Fla.
Seniors Debbie White, Kacy Ziomek and Adrienne Miroslaw, junior Sara Kasper
and sophomore Jen Johnstone are part of the Pocono team. So is Tunkhannock
junior Lindsay Shepherd.