NAPLES – While the Leavitt field hockey team may look back on Wednesday’s Western Maine Class B quarterfinal at Lake Region and take satisfaction that it dominated play for most of the game, there will no satisfaction in the fact that the final score didn’t reflect the relentless second-half efforts.
Kayla Nowell and Jessica Corson scored goals five minutes apart in the first 10 minutes of the game for the Lakers, and they withstood a Leavitt barrage late in the first half and into the second to defeat the Hornets 2-1 at Linda B. Whitney field.
“We planned on that early,” said Lake Region coach Dagny Leland. “We wanted to get a hold of the ball and play our own game early, get some goals, because anything can happen as the game goes along.”
“We got ourselves into a hole early,” said Leavitt coach Wanda Ward-MacLean. “We fought, clawed and struggled from there, and we had a couple of chances.”
Two of those chances came with the score 2-1 in the second half. With play in the Lake Region end for more than three minutes, one of the Hornets’ forwards fired a shot that hit the right post after skipping by Lake Region keeper Kristine Hamaty. Ten minutes later, a Leavitt goal was disallowed because officials ruled the ball, off a Leavitt stick, was too high as it passed the goaltender near some other defenders.
“Any time you don’t take advantage of your opportunities, it hurts,” said MacLean. “If we capitalize on those opportunities we had, we beat them easily. But we didn’t.”
The Lake Region defense was largely responsible for thwarting the Hornets’ advances early in the game, and again in the second half. Leavitt took four penalty corners in the opening half before Lake Region had a chance to move the ball into Leavitt’s half of the field.
In the second half, Leavitt had six such chances, scoring just once.
“They had all those chances in the second half,” said Leland, “but the defense played a great game back there.”
Corson’s goal 5:37 in helped slow the early Leavitt onslaught, and it came on the Lakers’ first penalty corner of the game.
“I pushed it in and we did a double-stick stop,” said Corson. “I got it back from (Nowell) and flipped my stick over and did a reverse stick flip, and it went right in.”
Nowell scored the next goal five minutes later on a rebound of a high shot that fell at Leavitt netminder Jessica Vickerson’s feet.
Jessica Paladino notched Leavitt’s only goal less than one minute into the second half on a drive from the right side, but the Hornets (11-4) couldn’t solve Hamaty again.
Lake Region (12-2-1) advances to play Greely in the Western Class B semifinals Saturday at Greely.
Comments are no longer available on this story