West Chester United wraps up regular season Keystone East title with seventh straight win

West Chester United is rolling into the NPSL playoffs after winning their seventh straight and knocking Philadelphia Ukrainian Nationals out of the playoff hunt with a 2-1 win on Friday night.

West Chester opened the scoring in the 15th minute when Brandon Curran played Matthew Scoffone in with a lovely through ball. The Ukies were able to fight back and equalize in the 29th minute when Carter Houlihan got outside of his mark into the final third and played a ball across Riley Martin was able to poke in to make it 1-1.

The score held to halftime and the teams were deadlocked in the second half when Chris Comber whipped a ball in from near the right corner flag that Ridge Robinson rose up to head home.

“It was a really good cross,” said Robinson, who celebrated his 30th birthday on Friday. “I just tried to get a head on it and luckily it went in today.”

In addition to securing the top seed for the conference final, Friday’s win capped an unbeaten season that started with three draws. Hershey FC plays their final regular season game at Torch FC tonight but Friday’s result secured their second place finish.

“The first few games we were early season, college guys coming back,” head coach Blaise Santangelo said. “The third game against Hershey we were up two nil, we missed a couple open nets and they battled back in the second half; they’re a really good team. But after that more guys came in and guys are getting more intense and we got a couple wins and it started to look like we could make a run.”

Depth is key for teams across the NPSL the deeper into July you get but West Chester’s depth is an even bigger factor when they are managing multiple campaigns in addition to NPSL. That they’ve already won a national championship this summer – winning the Hank Steinbrecher Cup in Arizona in early June – has only raised the commitment level across the teams and the weekly battles in training to make the 18.

“We’re happy to be undefeated and now that a new season starts with playoffs we’re excited,” Santangelo said.

With one postseason berth secure, West Chester United will turn its attention to USL League Two with a match tonight against Reading United at YSC Sports. West Chester is five points back of Ocean City Nor’easters in the Mid Atlantic standings and five points back of North Carolina Fusion for the wild card with two games in hand on both teams. The Mid Atlantic, Chesapeake and South Atlantic divisions share one wild card spot for playoffs.