The Springside Chestnut Hill men’s soccer team, also known as the Hillers, finished their season with a record of 7-11-3 and an Inter-Ac record of 2-6-1. They started their season with close games against high-ranked schools such as Father Judge, Westtown, and LaSalle College High School.

Because of the intensity and the turnout of the pre-season, the Hillers expected big things to come during the Inter-Ac. Head Coach Brian Zalasky stated, “I thought the expectation would be to compete for the league title this year.” 

Winning the Inter-Ac looked possible after a strong win over Germantown Academy in the Hillers’ first Inter-Ac game. The Hillers beat GA 2-0 with Goals by Junior AJ Trunfio and Senior Michael Glennon. 

After this game, the Hillers dropped four straight games to Haverford, Episcopal, Penn Charter, and Malvern.  This four-game losing streak raised many questions inside the team about what was causing these losses. 

Junior Patrick Donahue said, “We didn’t score many goals throughout Inter-Ac. Many of our games were scoreless until the end, but we just couldn’t capitalize on our chances.”

As the games progressed, the Hillers played the number-one-ranked Haverford again. Sophomore Warren Miller scored an early goal with a pass from Senior Anderson Swanger. As the game went on, Haverford scored two late goals to take a lead of 2-1. The Hillers were not able to create another chance and lost this game.

Throughout the season the Hillers faced lots of challenges and dealt with adversity.

Junior, John Ryan Maher said, “I think some games we handled the adversity better than others, such as the game against Episcopal on senior night, compared to us against Penn Charter when we went up 1-0 then lost 3-1.”

During their senior night, the Hillers were down 1-0 with twenty minutes left. Finally, the Hillers got a chance and Patrick Donahue capitalized on it, scoring a bicycle kick and tying the game.  

The Hillers didn’t finish the Inter-ACc where they wanted to be sitting, but as the state playoffs came around, the Hillers had a second chance for redemption. 

The 12-seed Hillers faced off against the 5-seed Hill School for the opening match of the playoffs. Hill was able to strike first and scored two goals in the first half. 

As time went on the Hillers found themselves down 2-0 with under ten minutes left in the game. Although time was running out, the Hillers were able to keep creating shots and working the ball around the Hill defense.

Warren Miller was able to connect and score and the Hillers only trailed by one. Soon after this Michael Glennon was able to get a shot off,  but he was called offsides in a questionable call.

The Hillers would end up losing to Hill 2-1 but fought to the last minute and didn’t give up until the final whistle blew. Although this season didn’t go as expected there is still light at the end of the tunnel for the Hillers. The Hillers have a young squad and will make things happen next year.