CB East captured the PIAA 4A state title with its win over archrival CB South.Andrew Robinson recaps all the action. Photos provided courtesy of Matt Tait. Trophy photos courtesy of Matt Ralph.
PIAA 4A State Tournament title game
#1-5 Central Bucks East 7, #1-4 Central Bucks South 0
MANCHESTER >> As soon as the matchup was locked in Tuesday night, setting the stage for a fourth meeting between the SOL Colonial rivals, the preparation began.
CB East’s players felt they could not, would not lose again to CB South this fall and especially not with a state championship on the line. Their three previous meetings had all been one-goal games and the last two losses, so they were expecting a battle, but from training to the last speeches before taking the field on Friday, East felt like it had exactly the motivation it needed to turn things around.
The Patriots put on a stunning display Friday afternoon, dispatching their SOL Colonial rivals 7-0 to bring home the program’s first-ever state title.
“I’m so unbelievably proud that this is the group that got us to this game and won this game,” Nesteruk said. “We fully believed we had everything it took to win it last year and this group came in wanting to do it and just the adversity they faced, the maturity they displayed to work through the hard moments, they never let their standards drop in terms of the soccer. We made a few adjustments, kids got healthy and the whole thing just took off.”
CB East hadn’t been to a state final since 2015 when the Patriots lost to Upper St. Clair 2-1. CB South hadn’t been to a state final since 2016 when the Titans lost 1-0 to Canon McMillan.
Neither team had ever won a state title, so in some way, history was going to be made Friday.
“Being a part of this team is a really big responsibility to everyone on it,” East junior Mia Forney said. “Not once were anyone’s vibes low. Not once did anyone think we were going to lose, not once did anyone say we were going to lose. It was always a positive vibe, obviously going into it there were some nerves and on Tuesday when we found out we were playing them, some people got in their heads about it but it got cut out.
“The second the whistle blew, it was just locked in.”
CB East drew a foul a little more than a minute into the game. It was spotted 45 yards out and relatively straight-on but it would have been out of range for a lot of players.
Not for Kiera Sleicher.
With a little extra motivation in her mind, the junior hit a booming, high-arcing kick that carried and carried before dipping and finding the sweet spot just under the cross bar to give East a 1-0 lead with 38:42 left in the first half. From the moment Tuesday night when they’d found out they were getting a fourth matchup with CB South, the Patriots players put themselves in a place where they knew they could win, and for Sleicher, that meant getting one back she hadn’t gotten the last time out.
“The last time we played them, they fouled us in about the same area and I took that shot and we ended up scoring off it but it was called back for offside,” Sleicher said. “Knowing that, I was going to do the same thing and this time luckily it wasn’t called back.”
There’s a solidarity between all goalkeepers. Only those who play the position know what it takes; the nuances, the techniques, the willingness to be a little bit brave and a little bit crazy with the knowledge everyone else is going to call you at least a little brave and a little crazy if not more of one than the other.
Aralynn Patterson is part of that group now and for at least a few more years. Jake Nesteruk was once an active part of that group, but it’s also one that a member never truly leaves.
That’s why when the East coach put the state championship medal around his senior co-captain goalkeeper’s neck and they shared a hug, it meant a little bit more.
“As a former keeper myself, we’re kind of used to it,” Nesteruk said. “That’s a kid who shows up, works really hard, she leads when she needs to and she holds the highest possible standard. We put her in some tricky situations with how we play and every single time we’ve needed her, she’s shown up.”
It’d be easy to look at the final score and think Patterson wasn’t tested at all on Friday. That’d be very wrong, if anything, the keeper might have made the single most important play of the game.
Not two minutes after Sleicher had shocked the crowd with her early goal, CB South was lining up for a corner kick. The Titans have been decidedly good on corners this year, Tessa Hughes hits a tremendous ball, and there are plenty of teammates willing to sell out to put them in the back of the net, so it was a really good spot to get right back in the match.
While the initial service was a little bit long, Monika Daly was able to put it right back in front to tee up Charlotte Manley. Except Patterson and her highlighter-colored kit were in the way, the senior taking the brunt of the shot that led to a scramble and East escaping when a third attempt was finally hit wide of the goal.
“It felt really big in the moment,” Patterson said. “We’d come this far and to be able to make game-changing saves like that, especially in my final game knowing I’m not going to wear an East jersey again, it was a very special moment for me.”
Sleicher scored again three minutes later, making it 2-0 but she and her teammates were very cognizant how important that save had been.
“Aralynn had a hell of a game and we’ve come to trust her in those moments,” Sleicher said. “When she makes a big save like that, honestly, it just helps all of us. It makes us want to play for her and today especially with it being her last game with us, we wanted to do our jobs and play for all our seniors.”
Last year, Patterson didn’t get to play in any of East’s three playoff games due to an injury. This fall, she not only played in all four, she posted a shutout in three of them and the lone goal she gave up was almost a fluke, a crazy bounce off a crossbar just going across the goal line for a second in the second round against Seneca Valley
“For me, it feels like a fairy tale ending,” Patterson said. “It’s the best way to go out. I’m super-proud of how far this team has come and I’m very thankful to Jake for the program he’s created, he’s been a supporter from Day One.”
East didn’t need long to add on. Taylor Roumy again picked a good moment to press, the junior winning the ball at the back on a slide tackle that sent in Sleicher to put away her second. Then 20 minutes later, they’d switch roles with Sleicher playing a ball over the top that Roumy took in and finished for a 3-0 lead.
Roumy then pushed to 4-0 late in the half on a shot off the left side that found its mark on the far post. In between those goals, Patterson came up clutch again, the senior making a diving stop on an absolute rocket hit by South senior Riley Karpinski that could have been a huge spark if it had gotten by.
“It’s a huge mental game coming into this game coming off a loss like that with them sending us to playbacks,” senior defender Skylar Lipp said. “When we clawed our way back from playbacks, it’s one of the best things as a senior to see the team buckle down like that and I’m just so proud of everybody’s efforts to get us all the way back from playbacks to a state final.”
This season, CB East won the first matchup 2-1 at CB South. Then the Titans returned the favor 3-2 on the Patriots field in the regular season and again 1-0 in the quarterfinal round of the District 1 tournament, sending East to the playback bracket and basically starting their state playoff run early.
While CB East would be playing a win-or-go-home match every game the rest of the season, the Patriots felt like they’d had their backs to the wall much of the year anyway. Not only were they breaking in five new starters, they also lost senior 
Magee Williamson to a season-ending injury, a few girls were moving to new positions, and the injury bug hit hard.
Sleicher picked up a bad ankle sprain in the third match of the season. Just as she was slated to return, junior Ava Mignon went out with a leg injury and by the time both of them were back, the postseason started and junior Mattie Williams was out as an ineligible player after transferring in from Lansdale Catholic over the summer.
“Those moments, they hurt us but then they pushed us more,” Sleicher said. “Nothing’s going to break us.”
Mignon, a dynamic presence in the midfield, saw universal growth in her team this season. New players had to find their fit in the lineup, then others were called on to take on more responsibility when the person in front of them went down but it never felt like it was just one person’s job to hold it all together.
“Even when I was out, seeing them fight through every single game, we did this as a team,” Mignon said. “I think we really earned it. Even with all the setbacks we had, we were able to fight through that.”
Friday’s venue at Northeastern had an odd feel. The pitch was narrow and it felt condensed but good teams adapt and Forney said both sides present in the final could find a way to play effectively on a big field or a small field so the Patriots weren’t looking at the match as being over at halftime.
CB South had come back twice in its semifinal win and the Titans had won two in a row against the Patriots, so there was plenty of reason to feel like South had something left in it.
“When you have teams that are good, games can change quickly,” Forney said. “Four is a big lead but also, 40 minutes is a long time. We knew they were going to come out like that, we knew they were going to try and get everything they can and do everything they can to jump on us quick and get the goals quick.
“We knew that and we knew for ourselves, we weren’t satisfied with four.”
Forney didn’t really give the Titans a chance to jump out fast. The junior pushed the lead to five six minutes into the half 
when she went on one of her patented runs, cutting in off the left flank and lining up a pinpoint shot with 34 minutes left.
Three minutes after that, Sleicher hit one in from a tight angle to give her a hat trick in her first state final, and Quinn Reilley would cap the scoring less than a minute later with a finish off a through ball played in by Forney.
East’s 7-0 margin of victory tied for the largest in a PIAA girls’ final, shared with Radnor in 1999 and Downingtown in 2001.
“I thought in the first half, both teams were very, very good, the difference was, I thought in the moments we had good possession with a purpose going forward, we were lethal in front of goal,” Nesteruk said. “Our back line and the keeper Aralynn Patterson comes up with two massive ones to keep the clean sheet so in the second half, they have to go chase the game. I thought we got even better, more in control, more patient, but also still did really well in front of goal.
“It was, to me, as perfect a day as we could have asked for from our kids and for it to be on the biggest stage is just amazing.”
The three shutouts in the state run are going to be a point of pride not only for Patterson, but her back line for a long, long time. Seniors Skylar Lipp and Paige Dougherty and juniors Addie Langolis and Cece Hayes hadn’t started a varsity game as a defensive unit prior to this fall but they molded into a strong back five that finished the year playing their best together.
Patterson pointed to last year’s center backs, Sydney Ralph and Savannah Hayes, who didn’t get their start on varsity until they were seniors as the example she tried to help her defenders follow. Dougherty will play lacrosse at Pitt next season while Lipp will continue playing soccer and they showed it’s not about how long a player waits but what they do when their time does come.
“It’s surreal, I really couldn’t have asked for anything more from my senior year,” Lipp, who is committed to Widener, said. “Our back line, we’ve grown to have such a bond, and it definitely shows out on the field. It’s clear, when the games get more stressful, I think that’s the better we do.”
Lipp and Patterson agreed it did take time to bring the defense together and a lot of it happened at practice in preseason or even off the field
“It makes it, honestly, so much better,” Lipp said. “In high school, you wait your turn and put in the time and that’s when it becomes worth it. There isn’t anything more I could have asked for, this was a best-case scenario.”
The final score was a gut-punch ending to what had been a resurgent season for CB South. The Titans not only made their first state final since 2016, but their first appearance in states overall since that same season.
A number of players had career years under first year coach Dana Cole and while they lose a strong senior class that includes Karpinski in the attack, Alana Peev, Peyton Mumm and Brooke Carrigan in defense and Hughes, Kelly Donnelly, Monika Daly and Delany Rowe in midfield, there are some good underclassmen returning. Khloe Montini and Charlotte Manley scored clutch goals all year and Peyton Karpinski was a fixture defensively for a team that battled through its own injury setbacks and turned a midseason lull into a winning streak and a top seven finish in District 1 heading into the postseason.
Riley Karpinski, who is off to Virginia Tech next year, hoped the returning players would be able to build on this season’s successes and tried to weigh the positives of the year against the deflating way it had come to an end.
“It made us feel really good about ourselves, since tryouts, everyone showed up to work hard every single day,” Karpinski said. “It made us feel good about ourselves to make it this far for the first time in a while.
“I’m most proud of the way we stuck through it the whole season. We had many ups and downs, we had highs where we’d be winning games and there was a time in the season where we had a low but we didn’t let it get to us.”
Scoring Summary
1st Half
CBE - Kiera Sleicher
CBE - Kiera Sleicher (Taylor Roumy)
CBE - Taylor Roumy (Kiera Sleicher)
CBE - Taylor Roumy
2nd Half
CBE - Mia Forney
CBE - Kiera Sleicher
CBE - Quinn Reilley (Mia Forney)
CENTRAL BUCKS EAST 4 3 - 7
CENTRAL BUCKS SOUTH 0 0 - 0
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