Mars blanks Northern York 3-0, advances to state quarterfinals

Following a PIAA Class 3A first-round state playoff win over Northern York, Blair Gerlach closed out the postgame team huddle with a clear message.

“To be continued, dot, dot, dot,” Gerlach said.

The Planets, 3-0 winners over visiting Northern York, had just secured the WPIAL crown on Saturday night, leaving Gerlach and his staff to “scramble to find film as quickly as we could,” he said. “We got the girls together, we had a film session, we talked about the things that they like to do and the areas where we thought that we may have good matchups.”

Forging into the state tournament, some of the opponents — such as the District 3 fourth-place finisher — start to look unfamiliar. The unacquainted opponent didn’t daunt Mars, (18-1-1) which got goals from freshman HB Wolski, sophomore Mackenzie Powell and junior Miley Gratton in the win.

The team the Planets had watched on tape against the Polar Bears (13-6-3) worked out of a different formation, so it wasn’t an exact science.

“We don’t know how they play or how they press or anything like that,” sophomore Reese Vuckovich said. “It feels different. It feels like we’ve gotta figure them out during the game instead of before like we’ve already played them.”

“We kind of approach it by learning how to adjust in different situations,” sophomore defender Brielle Krepin said. “Whether they have two forwards, three forwards and then we all work together to adjust to it.”

It takes maybe 10 minutes, Vuckovich added, to figure out what the other team is capable of.

“We watched film and it got us ideas of how the team plays and stuff, but it really comes down when we actually play them and the first 10 minutes,” sophomore defender Addison Jacoby said.

Mars advances to take on District 9 champion DuBois Area in the quarterfinals on Saturday.

“The excitement is the challenge, I would say,” Jacoby said. “Because it’s always fun to put your best out there and have a great outcome. … It’s so much fun to go against a new team.”

“It’s kind of a, ‘What’s next?'” Gerlach said. “We know that we’re very, very fortunate to still be playing right now, and we feel great about the fact that we bought ourselves another five days together, and we get at least one more time to play together. … We’re just gonna keep milking it as long as we can, because I feel like this was probably unforeseen for a lot of people — including us.”