The visiting Pottsgrove Falcons exploded for eight goals in the second half of Tuesday night's girls lacrosse game to post a 13-3 victory over the host Indians. Katie

Upper Perk's Caitlin Bauer reaches to catch the ball during Saturday's non-league match agains Twin Valley.  The  Tribe dropped the contest 18-3.  Bauer scored one goal in the game.

Bean and Alyssa Petrucelli scored three goals apiece as the Falcons strengthened their hold on first place in the Pioneer Athletic Conference's Frontier Division.

            Upper Perk, thanks mostly to the goaltending of MaKenna Phipps, hung tough in the first half against a team that had beaten the Indians 15-5 earlier in the year.

            "The defense stuffed it up pretty well in the beginning," said Upper Perk coach Catie Sobotor. "Our zone was working pretty well. We were limiting girls that we knew from the first game that were scorers."

            The game got off to a bizarre start that indirectly led to Pottsgrove's first goal. Upper Perk (2-9, 3-12) inadvertently played short one girl on the field which confused the game officials into thinking that the Indians had too many defenders in the Pottsgrove end of the field. On the restart of play, Phipps made a save, but was called for a circle violation. The Falcons' Sydney Tornetta cashed in on the next restart for a goal just 1:46 into the game.

            Upper Perk slowed the game down on the offensive end, a smart move to keep the ball away from the speedy and precise Falcons, and Phipps put up a wall in front of her cage until Bean perfectly led Sydney Wasdick racing down the slot in front of Phipps. Wasdick converted the pass to make it 2-0 with ten minutes gone.

            But 12 seconds later Cassidy Bush put a low shot past Pottsgrove's diminutive netminder Alaura O'Neill to cut the deficit in half.

            Just over a minute later, Petrucelli scored her first goal of the night after working around two UP defenders and bouncing a shot into the goal for a 3-1 lead as the Falcons (8-3, 12-4) continued to ramp up the pressure.

            Phipps (18 saves) did everything but stand on her head to keep the ball out of her cage.

            "Our goalie, MaKenna, did an amazing job," noted Sobotor. "She literally kept us in the game."

            Emily Williams finally solved Phipps with five minutes left in the half, and with Upper Perk down a girl because of a yellow card--the first of four on the evening--Petrucelli scored with 28 seconds remaining to give the Falcons a 5-1 lead.

            That was an improvement from the game against Pottsgrove in early April when the Falcons scored 10 goals in the first half.

            "We knew what girls we had to zero in on (Williams and Tornetta), and it worked well in the first half, but then other girls on Pottsgrove stepped up in other roles and then started scoring, and we had to adjust from there," said Sobotor.

            The second half floodgates opened seven minutes into the half on a goal by Tornetta, while Upper Perk was again serving out a yellow card. The  Carpenters got the goal back for UP less than a minute later with Bella converting a pass from Luci, but the visitors took advantage of yet another yellow card as Tornetta and Bates scored to make it 8-2.

            Sobotor lamented all the yellow cards but had high praise for the Falcons."They know where everybody is on the field. They know where they expect the ball to be passed to, where they're going to be on the attacking end. They know where they need to move to. They picked it up more in the second half than the first half."

            Lindsay Bieler scored Upper Perk's final goal on a nice cut in front of the cage with ten minutes left in the game.

            Last weekend the Tribe dropped an 18-3 non-league contest to Twin Valley. Lindsay Bieler, Caitlin Bauer and Grace Lehman notched the Upper Perk goals.