ADAMS TWP — The Mars girls soccer team found itself in unfamiliar territory, down by a couple of goals early in Monday night's WPIAL Class AAA first-round playoff game with Central Valley.

Their coach, Blair Gerlach, had a message for his squad.

“I told the girls to breathe,” Gerlach said, matter-of-factly. “I was thinking, we start a good amount of seniors. Although seniors are somewhat older, they're not playoff experienced. That (2-0 deficit) was nerves. That was anxiety. That was not letting your excitement be a positive.”

Gerlach calmed his squad down and it went on to score three unanswered goals to capture a 3-2 first-round win at the Mars Athletic Complex.

For visiting Central Valley (8-7-1), the loss was truly a heartbreaker. After jumping out to an early two-goal lead, it could get nothing going the rest of the game and allowed the aforementioned three goals. Warriors' head coach Chet Gapczynski had no answers following the tough loss, which ended his team's season.

“We were the underdog team, but we thought we could play with them,” Gapczynski said. “That (two-goal lead) was unexpected. To come out and do that … I knew that Mars would get their head on and come back. That's exactly what they did.”

Early, it was all Central Valley. CV's Ryleigh Bauer found a loose ball and found the back of the net with 34:50 left in the first half.

Less than three minutes later, the Warriors struck again. This time, Gabby Chirico went high and scored to make it 2-0. That goal came with 32:11 left in the half.

“We have enough quality (players). I felt like we could calm down and we could score goals. I'm glad it was 2-0 10 minutes in instead of 2-0 at halftime,” Gerlach said.

Mars got on the board with 27:24 remaining in the first half. On a corner kick, Mars' Amber Lisman found a loose ball and poked it past Central Valley's Jackie Smith to cut the deficit to 2-1.

The Planets had a couple more solid chances before Kaitlyn McKenzie found another loose ball and poked it past Smith. That goal came with 9:28 left in the half and knotted the game at 2-2.

At the half, Gerlach said he liked where his team was.

“I told the girls to relax. I said 'it's going to be fine, you're going to get a couple of chances.' I wanted to make sure the girls didn't fall asleep. I felt like there were times when we had the ball in their end of the field for five, six, seven minutes at a time and all of a sudden they would counter and it's a two on two or a three on three, some odd man rush,” Gerlach said.

Mars got what would be the eventual game-winner with 18:52 left in the game. Maggie Williams made a picture-perfect pass to Tori Kopchak and she buried the goal to give the Planets their first lead of the game.

Both teams had some chances down the stretch, but failed to convert.

The Planets (13-2-2) move on to the WPIAL Class AAA quarterfinals, where they will face Ambridge (11-5-2) on Thursday. The site and time of that game has not been determined.

“We'll talk about playing from the start,” Gerlach said, “rather than chasing the game. There are lots of equal teams. It's going to be a battle.”