As the champions of WPSL’s Colonial Conference, the Washington Spirit Reserves earned the right to host the East Region final four on their home turf at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, MD. Unfortunately, it did them little good as they fell to the visiting Cleveland Ambassadors, 3-0, in the first match of the weekend.

It wasn’t entirely for lack of personnel. Though they were missing some key players like Kaleigh Riehl, Paula Germino-Watnick, and Chinyelu Asher, they still had ones like Bridgette Andrzejewski, Meaghan Nally, Marissa Sullivan, and Jessica Berlin. “I had to beg people to stay and come, so we did have more people than expected,” said head coach KJ Spisak. “That was just me begging.”



On paper, Cleveland looked to be the toughest of the visiting teams with a 7-0-1 record as champions of the Ohio Valley Conference, and it was clear almost from the opening kickoff that Washington would have its hands full. While the Spirit Reserves sometimes seem to be content just to maintain possession, the Ambassadors seemed laser-focused on trying to score as quickly as possible, never mind that that means they give the ball away if they don’t. That strategy almost paid off as soon as the 6th minute as forward Lani Smith got through one-on-one with goalkeeper Jess Berlin. It looked like a certain goal, but her shot went off the right post.

Five minutes later she’d have a similar opportunity off a feed from midfielder Sarah Krause and would make no mistake this time, tucking it into the lower right corner.

Marissa Sullivan attempted to even the score in the 26th minute, but her shot was saved by goalkeeper Madison Less. Cleveland held onto a 1-0 lead going into the half.

Chances were rare in the second half until the 73rd minute, when Krause again sent a good through ball in, this time to Kati Druzina, who sent the ball into the middle of the net from the right.

The Spirit Reserves started pressing hard to get back into the game but then in the 86th minute turned the ball over in midfield. Druzina sent a ball through to Smith before the defense could recover. Smith dodged Berlin and was able to put the ball into an open net to seal the match.

It was the first loss for Washington in three seasons of WPSL play and their first loss since the 2014 W-League championship.

Cleveland head coach Caleb Fortune was gracious in victory. “I thought Washington were a very good team. They had a lot more possession, very well organized, a good group.”

Goalkeeper Jessica Berlin, a northern Virginia native and a rising sophomore at NC State, complimented the only team this season to get more than two balls past her. “This is one of the tougher teams that we’ve played. We brought it, but I don’t think we were quite as prepared as we could have been.”

She went on to talk about how much being with the Reserves has helped her. “This team has been really beneficial for me because it’s allowed me to learn to play with my feet and gain more confidence on my own because I red-shirted last year. I haven’t played a game in a while, so this summer was really important for me to train with some really high-quality players and work on myself.”

Stalwart defender Julia Phillips is a rising junior at Ole Miss and the only player still on the team who faced the eventual WPSL champion Boston Breakers Reserves in the 2016 playoffs. (Washington won but couldn’t continue in the playoffs due to player unavailability, so Boston took their place in the finals.) I asked her if this was the toughest team they’d played since then, and she responded with an emphatic, “Yes!”

Her comments on the game: “I think we could have communicated better in the back line and just altogether played better, but they were very good at what they did in playing those through balls through us, breaking us down that way.”

Spisak had similar thoughts. “Credit to Cleveland. They had a game plan, and they executed it. They were really sharp and hard to break down. We just weren’t our best today, and that affected how we went at it. It wasn’t the result we wanted, not the result we hoped for, but it’s the result we deserved from our performance. I think we could have been better prepared, and that’s down to me. But we’ll learn from this.”

SUSA FC 2, Torch FC 0

In the second semifinal, Metropolitan Conference representative SUSA FC scored two first-half goals to get by Mid-Atlantic’s Torch FC. In the 10th minute, Julia Duffy stole the ball in midfield and sent it forward to Kristin Desmond, who beat the goalkeeper to the ball out from the left post and put it in the net. Then in the 27th minute Desmond made a long run down the right sideline and sent a cross in that Jenna Blank put away.

East Region Final: Cleveland Ambassadors 1, SUSA FC 0

Smith scored the lone tally in this match for a weekend hat trick, assisted again by Druzina. (I was feeling under the weather on Sunday and unfortunately wasn’t up for taking in this match, which seemed like a suspenseful one.)

The evening after the match, Cleveland tweeted their regrets that they would not have enough players available to compete in the national final four. WPSL announced that their replacements would be Fire & Ice FC, the Central Region runners-up and the 2017 WPSL champions. There was no explanation as to why the replacement didn’t come from the East Region, though quite possibly the alternative teams had the same problem.

The other three teams are the Chicago Red Stars Reserves (Central), the Seattle Sounders (West), and Pensacola FC (South).