PINE GROVE — Earlier this month, in the Cardinals’ final regular-season contest of the year against Shenandoah Valley, Pine Grove freshman Ella Langel stood in the center circle wearing her No. 20 jersey.
Langel’s freshman season didn’t go as she would have hoped. After suffering an injury in the spring, Langel was sidelined for the season and relegated to the bench, where she served as the team’s scorekeeper.
But on a night dedicated to celebrating seniors, the senior class and the rest of Langel’s Pine Grove teammates made sure she had her moment.
At the opening whistle, Langel passed the ball back before a teammate kicked it out of bounds, allowing her to sub out of the game.
With Langel starting the contest, Pine Grove achieved one of its preseason goals: ensuring that all 29 players on the roster earned at least one varsity start this season.
“It was the players’ idea,” Pine Grove coach Rahn Richards said. “Ella Langel has been injured the whole season. She’s been keeping book for us. We’ve been trying to keep her involved in the team, and one of our goals from the beginning of the season was for every player on our team to at least start one varsity match. Ella was the last one that hadn’t started yet. So we decided that we were going to ceremoniously start her tonight.”
“I just think it was something that the whole team wanted to do,” senior Riley Ott said. “We just wanted to include her in our team traditions. Even though she’s just a freshman, we still wanted to include her.”
The gesture exemplifies the culture Richards and the team’s senior leaders have fostered throughout the season. While many high school athletic programs struggle with individualism and inner-team cliques, that was not an issue for the Cardinals this year.
“When they came to me and said, ‘We have to get Ella on the field before the end of the season,’ like, for me, it was almost like they made that hump,” Richards noted. “Like they’re over that hump now. And, you know, they trust each other. All of those interpersonal things or inner-group things are gone.”
But the Cardinals in years past were not immune to that drama.
“I feel like the past few years for us we’ve dealt with like a lot of drama,” Gianna Pompei said. “I feel like this year we have come together and like we actually want to work for something. Like we want to win, we want to play together, we want to do good. So I feel like this year it has helped us a lot… We came together and like we’re doing really well this year. We haven’t really had a bunch of drama at all really.”
“It just feels like we’re more, we work more as a team and the whole team is like a family more this year instead of competing against each other,” Mya May added.
While the Cardinals had success on the field, going 11-5-2 this fall and earning the sixth seed in the District 11 playoffs, Richards is most proud of his team’s growth off the field.
“The cultural changes and the non-scoreboard, non-soccer field related stuff for me, is what I’m most proud of with these girls,” he said. “Because things happened over the course of the season where they became a solid group. There was infighting and stuff at the beginning of the season that doesn’t exist anymore. And there was selfishness in the group that doesn’t exist anymore.”
But that culture change took time. Richards noted that it wasn’t until later in the season after a loss to North Schuylkill that things really began to click for his team.
“Accountability was a big thing with the girls,” he said. “After, I want to say it was after the North Schuylkill loss, we got together as a team. And I said, ‘Girls, there’s been a little bit of finger pointing. We’re all frustrated right now. If you want to move forward, we’ve got to take accountability for this.’”
Richards led by example in the process.
“I took my accountability for not making a tactical adjustment that probably could have helped us,” he said. “I apologized for that and I said, ‘Now, the only people that can forgive me are the other coaches and the athletic director. You don’t have to forgive me. But you have to forgive each other. If someone feels like they’ve done something that maybe wasn’t in the best interest of the team, this is your opportunity to get it off your chest and put it behind you, or it’s going to continue to linger.’”
Ultimately, his message resonated with his team, who took it to heart.
“The girls actually did. They self-reflected,” he said. “From that point on, there was a lot more accountability.”
Translating it to the pitch
The selflessness and trust that Pine Grove built off the field also translated directly to the pitch.
“It definitely feels more fluid, like we feel smooth and connected on the field,” senior Meadow Umbenhauer said. “When we play our best soccer, we’re connecting passes, possessing, working the ball around, and just getting the ball up top for a solid attack. It definitely felt more cohesive up top, like we’re playing together and playing good soccer.”
When the Cardinals expect to win by multiple goals, Richards has often instituted a goal limit for his team before using the rest of the game as a tactical practice.
“Some teams like to run the score up,” he said. “For me, it’s a training session. No matter what, if we’re not going to have something competitive, we got to turn it into a training session.”
Another part of the Cardinals’ success this season has been Richards’ ability to find balance in his manner of coaching.
“He’s just overall really positive and encouraging, but he also pushes us to be the best that we can be,” Ott said. “So it’s good to have that balance.”
Ultimately, the Cardinals proved to be one of the better teams in the Schuylkill League throughout the season, despite missing the Schuylkill League playoffs.
But missing the league playoffs could serve as an advantage for the Cardinals.
Preparing for districts
Missing out on the league tournament gave the Cardinals 15 days off between their regular-season finale on Oct. 14 and Wednesday’s District 11 quarterfinal matchup. The time off allowed the Cardinals to prepare tactically to play their best soccer of the season while also giving them time to heal up.
“We did some conditioning and we also did a lot of scrimmaging and we were working with each other, working on the things that need to be cleaned up and just overall getting better and progressing in the right way,” Umbenhauer said. “So I think a lot of us are well-rested but also well-conditioned and we’re ready to go into playoffs.”
“Having the rest really helps because we’ve been having a lot of injuries recently,” Pompei added. “You just need that rest and I feel like it’s great that we’re having rest and just being prepared for Wednesday, which is a really big game for us. A lot of us want to win, we want to go on.”
Practices over the last two weeks remained intense, and accountability was maintained, especially by the seniors who know any game they play going forward could be their last with the program.
“If we have to yell at people because people just goof around, this is our last chance to get one more run. We want to keep winning, and we want to keep moving on,” Pompei said.
The first-round matchup against Allentown Central Catholic in the opening round. The Vikings posted a 13-3-2 record in the regular season. Playing in a stacked Class AA bracket that also includes Northwestern Lehigh (16-1-1), Notre Dame-Green Pond (13-2-0), Palisades (12-2-2) and Palmerton (11-4-2), the Cardinals will encounter plenty of challenges if they hope to make a deep postseason run.
“The goal is to play as long as we can,” Umbenhauer said. “Definitely giving 100 percent effort and working hard because this is all the seniors have left. Definitely working hard not only for us, but also for themselves to give them that experience.”