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Early on in the first half, the Lakers had several good scoring opportunities and seemingly capitalized on both of them, only to have both goals waved off.

The first of those two questionable plays occurred on a shot with 20:47 remaining in the first half. The ball hit the bottom of the crossbar and when it was caught by the Charger's goalie the ball appeared to have crossed the goal line, but the officials ruled it had not.

Less than a minute later (with 19:50 remaining in the half), EPBP appeared to make up for that near miss with a score on a header off of a corner kick. But it was ruled that the ball went out of bounds before reentering the playing field, which resulted in the ball being considered out of bounds.

Laker coach Mark Weidman knew his team couldn't get caught up in a pair of calls that went against them. "There is not much you can do about it when the ref makes the decision like that," Weidman said.

"I know the girls were a little frustrated at first, but they seemed to let it go fairly quickly," he added.

Weidman realized that played a big role in his team winning. "If you let something like that get to you, it can just mentally break you down. I thought we shook it off pretty good and kept playing well," he said.

By keeping their heads in the game, EPBP was able to get on the board 12 minutes later when Sam Krueger scored the game's only goal with 7:51 left in the half. Krueger was assisted by Amanda Dubey on the play. "You could just see it start to happen," Weidman explained. "Kaycee Damm took it down the right side and things seemed to open up."

He added, "We just stayed after it and Sammy ran to the net and put it in. That was a great run on her part."

The Lakers took the 1-0 edge into halftime and as the game progressed that one goal advantage gave them the freedom to switch to a more defensive minded effort late in the game.

"When you are up by one goal and there is 15 minutes to go you change your mindset. You don't want to give the ball away, you want to possess ball, hold on to it and make some combination passes," he said. "We played some pretty good defense in the end."

A lot of credit for that has to go to Dubey helping out on that end. "Actually Dubey asked if she could go back and play defense and how could I argue with that? My fastest player wanted to play defense," Weidman said.

"We had a one goal lead so we didn't need another goal, so I decided to put her back there," he added.

The defense also got a lift from goalie Beth Ritter, who has been stellar in net recently and has not allowed a score in the playoffs (four games).

"She's a very good goal keeper and she is in a position now to really help us out," Weidman said. "She was tested on a few chances and that is what we prepared her for."

Weidman added, "She is really rising to the occasion."

Even a solid effort from Ritter wasn't enough to keep Weidman from getting nervous in such a tight game. "Every ball that went across midfield and into our end I was kind of like, ÔOh no,' because it was that type of game," he explained. "One wrong bounce, one missed play and that could have changed the whole complexion of the game."

But in the end, a tough game like this can only make EPBP even stronger as they head into tonight's State semi-final match-up with Ann Arbor Greenhills at Troy Athens High School at 6 p.m. "We needed a game like this," he said. "We haven't really had a (close) game like this in the tournament until now."

Weidman added, "We know teams will only get better beyond this."

The 19-2 Lakers advanced to the Regional finals with a 8-0 mercy against Byron.

Erin Gettel, Megan Jobes and Stephanie Maxwell led the offense with two scores each, while Kaycee Damm and Amanda Dubey added a goal apiece. Kaycee Damm, Sheena Damm, Kate Gettel, Jobes, Krueger and Ritter all had assists for EPBP.

Byron had just one shot on goal against Ritter.