BALTIMORE, Pa.—The scoring floodgates opened in the second half for No. 22 Swarthmore College Women's Soccer in Saturday afternoon's Centennial Conference Tournament semifinal game against McDaniel College. After going into halftime tied at 1-1, Swarthmore scored four more times en route to a 5-2 win.
With the win, the Garnet (14-2-2) advanced to the Centennial Conference Championship for the second year in a row. They will attempt to defend their 2017 title in Sunday's 1 p.m. contest against top-seeded Johns Hopkins University.
The Garnet, despite holding a 9-4 advantage on shots in the first half, found themselves down in the 21st minute following a goal by the McDaniel Green Terror. Swarthmore evened the count in the 33rd minute when Sophia Stills, who had entered the game just 33 seconds earlier, provided the Garnet the spark they needed off the bench by pushing through the defense and ripping a shot into the top left corner of the goal.
The score held at 1-1 going into the second half, but Swarthmore's Marin McCoy put the Garnet ahead in the 53rd minute with a blast of a shot from the edge of the box that went in for her 10th goal of the year.
McDaniel notched a tying goal in the 66th minute, but the Garnet received a gift from the Green Terror in the 73rd minute. On a restart near midfield, Eleonore Moser drove the free kick into McDaniel's box where a defender misplayed the ball and headed it into the team's own goal.
Up 3-2, the Garnet never looked back. Sophomore Bellara Huang got in on the scoring action with her first goal of the season in the 83rd minute on a nice shot that drifted over the keeper's reach.
Swarthmore capped off its scoring spree in the 90th minute with Brittany Weiderhold tacking on her seventh score of the year.
Swarthmore's defense limited McDaniel to 11 attempts all game, and Amy Shmoys posted four saves in the net for the Garnet.
The Centennial Championship game begins at 1 p.m. on Sunday at Johns Hopkins University against the top-seeded Blue Jays. In last season's championship meeting at Hopkins, the Garnet beat the Blue Jays in penalty kicks to claim the title.
