Before a packed house at Highmark Stadium on an unusually pleasant mild early November night, there was plenty of joy and agony to go around as Class AAA WPIAL Soccer finals played out.
Canon-McMillan boys won in dramatic fashion, 2-1, in extra time, over a Fox Chapel side that had their way for 78 minutes; and Norwin girls exercised their dominance to keep their unbeaten season intact by defeating Upper St. Clair 3-0, as both teams took home Class AAA WPIAL soccer titles on Friday night.
The drama of the Big Macs win was captured by Pittsburgh Tribune-Review‘s Bill West:
CANON MCMILLAN BOYS WIN WPIAL CLASS AAA TITLE
I covered the Norwin-USC game, and I’ll have to say, this was my first look at the Knights.
That is a very impressive team that played at a fast pace, are strong technically, can be physical and they had solid goalkeeping to boot.
As their coach Lauren Czapor said, the sky’s the limit for her team. They should be a very strong contender to win the State title.
Finally, I failed to mention this in my game story — that maybe the most impressive stat line for Norwin’s 22-0 run this year is that they’ve surrendered just 4 goals (I know I mistakenly tweeted five at one point last night).
That’s right four goals in 22 games.
Sign of a dominating season and well-deserved WPIAL Champions.
Here’s my complete game story of Norwin’s 3-0 win: