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Wheeling Park Girls Set Up Rubber Match vs. Morgantown After Sectional Win vs. Bruins

By NICK HENTHORN 3 min read

WHEELING - The Wheeling Park Patriots' postseason started with a bang Tuesday, a dominant 9-0 win over the Brooke Bruins at Wheeling Island Stadium.

The Patriots led 8-0 at halftime in their sectional semifinal matchup. Wheeling Park (14-4-1) advances to face Morgantown in the sectional championship, who defeated John Marshall 10-0 in their own sectional semifinal.

It will be the third meeting between the Patriots and the Mohigans. Each team has one won game against the other thus far. The game is set for Thursday at 6 p.m. in Morgantown.

"It's a long season and we were excited to play in the tournament and get it started with Brooke," Wheeling Park head coach Tom Smith said.

"I was pretty happy with the way we were moving the ball today."

Brooke (9-8-1) sees their season draw to a close, and bids farewell to five seniors-Emily Schulte, Hailey Buterbaugh, Payton Adler, Jania Jones, and Lyla Horvath.

"If you look at our schedule, we had a very hard schedule," Brooke head coach Jack Minger said.

"There's games we could've won, should've won, that we didn't, and there were games that we just simply got beat."

It was the third time that Wheeling Park and Brooke had faced one another, with the Patriots taking all three matchups.

"They're just too good," Minger said.

"There's not much else to say. We made a lot of little mistakes and they capitalized on them. The score shows it."

The Patriots tallied two goals in the first five minutes, with Park's Katelyn Smith and Julia Dunaway scoring in nearly identical ways, boxing out a defender to take a touch and rip uncontested shots at the goal.

Dunaway got her second goal of the game in the 11th minute, running at full speed on the right wing before taking a shot that clanged off the crossbar and through the net. Smith scored her second goal of the game in the 15th minute.

Dunaway notched the hat trick in the 19th minute, and Park's Lauren Spears scored in the 21st minute to make it 6-0.

Brenna Tipton scored a pair of goals within three minutes of each other, first converting a kick in-close, and then pulling off a nifty move for her second score, managing to just barely redirect the ball inches away from the Bruins' keeper, who voyaged out from the goal to try and smother the play, before kicking it through.

Brooke's sophomore keeper Ivy Myers finished with 11 saves, holding her own against a constant barrage.

"She had a really good season," Minger said of Myers. "Last time I looked she was ranked second in AAA, she had over 200 saves before this game, I'm not sure what she has now. She's only a sophomore, she's going to be really good over the next couple of years."

Wheeling Park had 20 shots on goal to Brooke's one. The Bruins did have a goal by Brianna Bassett called back for offsides in the first half.

Wheeling Park will look to keep their offense humming against the Mohigans. Smith says his team has been on quite a roll as of late.

"As far as ball movement and off-the-ball movement, the last four or five games we're doing that really well […] I'm very happy with the girls' unselfishness, the way they all play together as a team. They don't care who scores, it's all about winning."

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