Everything seemed to favor the Virginia Beach Piranhas when they lined up to play the Washington Spirit Reserves for the Northeastern Conference championship of the USL’s W-League.
The Piranhas had the league’s best record at 10-1-1. They had the leagues top goal scorer in Shan Jones, who led the league with 11 goals. And six days earlier they defeated the Spirit 2-1 after having wrapped up a spot in the playoffs and the #1 seed.
However, when the final whistle blew the most important thing that didn’t favor the Piranhas was the final score.
The Spirit posted 2-1 upset of Virginia Beach, coming from behind with a pair of goals after the Piranhas had taken a 1-0 first-half lead on a goal by stoppage time goal off a corner kick by Esther Anyanwu.
The Spirit equalized in the 57th minute on a goal by captain Hayley Siegel, and got the winning goal by Ashley Herndon off a pass from W-League assist leader Amber Stobbs.
The Spirit’s Andi Sullivan, a member of the U.S. Under-17 national team, kept Jones, the Piranhas’s main offensive weapon, off the scoreboard. The only two losses for Virginia Beach this season were to the Spirit Reserves.
The Spirit Reserves (7-3-3) take the #3 seed into the national semifinals, where they will play the Western Conference champion Pali Blues (8-2-2) on Friday, July 26 at IMG Academy in Brandenton, FL.
The Blues are led by Wake Forest scoring sensation Katie Stengel, and they are the only one of the three semifinalists to have won a W-League title. They took back-to-back titles in 2008-2009.
The Carolina Elite Cobras take on Canada’s Laval Comets in the second semifinal game.
Individual W-League Honors
Jones won both the league’s regular scoring champion and goal-scoring champion title thanks to her 11 goals and 24 points in 11 games.
Jones is a Wales international who played four collegiate seasons at Middle Tennessee State University.
Stobbs shared the assist champion honors with Juliana Libertin of the Dayton Dutch Lions. Each handed out nine assists this season. Stobbs, a native of England, is a rising senior at Hofstra University
Goalkeeper Kailen Sheridan of the Toronto Lady Lynx earned the Goals-Against Average Champion trophy this season with five shutouts in seven starts for a 0.428 GAA. Sheridan, a Canadian youth international, is headed to Clemson University in the fall. She allowed only three goals in 630 minutes of play this season.
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