Oct 25, 2020 By Rob Burchianti rburchianti@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read

Jeff Puskar realizes what his Connellsville girls soccer team accomplished during the regular season.

The Lady Falcons romped through their schedule undefeated and unscored upon with an 11-0 record in winning Section 2-AAA. Their offense poured in 102 goals. Their defense allowed none.

Amazingly, Connellsville only has two seniors on its roster in Shelby Basinger and Cayde Koballa. It’s leading scorer is junior Mary Kate Lape. It’s top goalkeepers are junior starter Madison Kinneer and sophomore Breanna Soltis.

Yet Puskar doesn’t want to dwell on the past, preferring to look at what lies ahead for his squad.

Connellsville was given a No. 4 seed in the WPIAL playoffs and opens the postseason at home against No. 13 Montour on Monday at 6:30 p.m.

“We’re just trying to keep the girls working hard to get them to embrace where they are right now because they have a great opportunity in front of them,” Puskar said. “I just hope they understand how important it is.”

Connellsville’s gaudy statistics won’t intimidate opponents, rather they more likely give opponents extra incentive to mar their clean defensive slate, according to Puskar.

“We’ve been talking about it. I’ve been trying to save some of my best motivational speaking for this time of year. I don’t want to use them all up early,” Puskar said with a laugh.

“I’ve been telling them we are going to have a somewhat target on our back, although we haven’t proven anything in the WPIAL. There’s still some good teams out there. You have Mars, West Allegheny, Plum had a really good run last year, and then Belle Vernon had a good run. I kind of told the girls no matter what happens we’re going to have to be able to pick our head up if there’s a goal scored (against us).”

Connellsville played in Class AAAA last year and went 12-6 overall and 8-4 in Section 3, good enough for third place and a playoff spot. Enrollment numbers dropped them into Class AAA for 2020 and Puskar’s team faced a challenge in its opener against perennial power Belle Vernon.

The Lady Falcons rolled to a 5-0 victory, which gave Puskar and indication that he might have a special team on his hands.

“We just didn’t know where we’d match up with all the teams,” Puskar said. “After that game we had a pretty good feeling for the season, that we would match up pretty good against all the other teams in the section.”

Connellsville’s closest match of the season came in the rematch with the Lady Leopards, which the Lady Falcons won, 1-0, on a goal by Lape in the second overtime.

Connellsville beat third-place Ringgold, 5-0 (their rematch was cancelled and the Lady Rams left out of the postseason because of COVID-19 issues at Ringgold), and fourth-place Trinity twice, 7-0 and 6-0.

Puskar feels his team is battle tested from its days in Class 4A, except for some freshmen whom he has counted on this year.

“We’ve had a lot of ninth graders step up and play a big role,” Puskar said. “They’re the ones who haven’t been in the playoffs. Our juniors and seniors, they’ve been playing against Norwin or Penn-Trafford or Hempfield or Latrobe and Pine-Richland for the last few years in 4A.

“The older girls know what to expect. They know it’s going to be physical, they know it’s going to be fast and chaotic. The main thing is can the younger girls embrace that and hopefully organize the madness that’s going to be happening around them?”

The No. 4 seed would seem to be an insult for a team that’s done what Connellsville has done in the regular season, but Puskar wasn’t upset about it.

“We didn’t play any non-section games and I think the WPIAL didn’t feel our section was all that strong,” Puskar said. “It’s a great accomplishment, what these girls did, but we can celebrate that later. Right now this is a different season.

“I hope they can rise to the challenge.”