West Perry’s football program is vibrant, and it’s evidenced by the fact that both the girls’ and boys’ teams advanced to Round 1 of the Region III playoffs after 11-win and 10-win seasons, respectively.

The West Perry Mustang boys team finished the season with a 10-7-1 record, moving into fourth place in the league standings, with a 4-0 loss to the Conrad Weiser Scouts on Oct. 21, who went 17-0-undefeated in the regular season. 1. This was the fourth straight year the Mustangs advanced to Regionals.

“We wanted to keep it close to half,” commented head coach Jared Weibley. “We were looking for a 1-0 or 1-1 score, but it ended just short of 2-0 in the first half.”

“They applied a lot of pressure,” Weibley added. “They have very good athletes” “We went to 4-3-3 in the second half” However, the result was the same; Scouts scored two more goals at half-time to secure a 4-0 victory.

That same day, the West Perry girls team traveled to Lower Dauphin, where the 15-2 Falcons defeated the Lady Mustangs, 9-0, ending their shortened playoff series.

“We battled hard all night,” head coach Tom Smeigh said. “But we were vastly superior. They were the better team.” West Perry entered the game with an 11-7 record looking for its first District playoff win after three consecutive games.

Lower Dauphin had 26 shots on goal, while West Perry had only 4 shots. Senior goalkeeper Haley Nickel made 17 saves and ironically “may have been our best player on the field,” according to Smeigh. As strange as it may sound after scoring nine goals, Nickel ended his career with perhaps the best performance considering the number and quality of shots he was presented with.

West Perry actually trailed 3-0 with just over a minute left in the first half, but the Falcons scored twice in the first half to take a 5-0 lead. After that, Smeigh said he spoke to the team about “finishing strong”.

Lower Dauphin’s cross-county forward Ashley Economopoulos scored a hat trick in the competition and is set to play collegiately at Old Dominion.