Whitehall’s girls soccer team had a 2-0 lead over Freedom with five minutes to play, but the Patriots erased the Zephyrs’ advantage to register a 2-2 tie on Sept. 9 at Whitehall.

“I thought [our defense] got a little pulled apart at the end,” said Whitehall coach Chris Bleam. “The gaps were a little bit too big, so we couldn’t close the space, especially that last one. We hadn’t recovered properly before the corner kick, and therefore, we weren’t in position to defend it properly. We scrambled, and we tried our best, but we just weren’t in good starting positions.”

Avery Pierce and Abigail Barone scored a goal apiece for the Patriots within two minutes of each other.

“We made a switch with 10 minutes to go,” said Freedom coach Tony Billone. “We took Cece Warren, who’s our center back, and put her up top, and we put Giada Loquasto in the back, and Cece changed the game for us. We were able to get the goals because of her playmaking.”

Barone described the equalizer.

“I just saw a bunch of people, and then the ball came back to me, so I was like, I’m just gonna shoot it now. It was good. It was really good,” she said. “[At halftime], we talked about how we all needed to communicate more because that was the main problem and making sure we were completing runs.”

Whitehall freshman Madelyn Shaulis put the Zephyrs on the board midway through the first half.

“I drove down and chopped it back across my body and shot it lefty to the left corner,” said Shaulis. “We were holding strong and playing in the midfield better than we were in some of our other games. We were holding our own out there.”

The Zephyr defense with Cora Musselman in goal was dominant in the first half.

Center back Kaila Wexler said, “Our biggest goal was to shut them down right away, don’t give them any space, and make sure to watch the outside. There was a lot of covering and a lot of communicating, making sure we were pressuring hard. With that first goal, we got a lot of energy, and that’s what we needed.

They did catch us in the last couple minutes, which was hard. We can’t give away stuff like that. We could feel the energy from them. They had a lot of competitiveness and quickness on us.”

Claire Schrampf scored Whitehall’s second goal with 7:13 remaining in the second half to extend the Zephyrs’ lead.

“They had chances. We had chances,” Coach Bleam said. “I thought we were playing well. I thought they were more physical than we were, but we seemed to answer to that and improve as the game went on. It was a good game.”