WATERVILLE — Defending state champion Winthrop opened the Class C South field hockey playoffs with a 6-0 quarterfinal victory over Hall-Dale at Thomas College on Tuesday.

Five players scored for the top-ranked Ramblers, including Hannah Duley, who finished with two goals.

“We did well communicating and passing, which was one of the big emphasis for this game,” Duley said. “We really passed around (Hall-Dale).”

The eighth-seeded Bulldogs struggled in their first game on an artificial turf field.

“That was definitely a handicap for us,” Hall-Dale coach Angela Corbin said. “It made it a little more challenging than a grass field. It’s two different games.”

The teams didn’t find out until Monday that the game would be played at Thomas College, which has turf facilities. Corbin said she told her team to anticipate a faster game.

Kerrigan Anuszewski gave the Ramblers a 1-0 lead 12:18 into the game with a goal off a penalty corner. Nearly three minutes later, Brooklyn Gaghan stretched the lead to 2-0.

“It gets the girls’ heads into the right place when we get that first goal,” Winthrop coach Jessica Merrill said. “It’s, ‘Actually, yes, we can do this.’ We are a young squad and we are still figuring things out, but they looked good today.”

Duley extended Winthrop’s lead to 3-0 with less than 11 minutes remaining in the first half.

”That first (goal) is always an eye-opener,” Corbin said. “Once we were down three, I could see the shoulders shrugging, but my goalkeeper and seven other starters are freshman and sophomores. We are young.”

Duley made it 4-0 nearly 11 minutes into the second half.

Gia Francis added to the scoring barrage, setting up beside the cage and jamming the ball across the goal line for a 5-0 cushion.

Maddie Perkins also scored in the second half for Winthrop (14-1).

“It’s great to have multiple goal scorers because it makes that much harder to mark us,” Merrill said. “You mark one, we got five others that can put (the ball) in.”

Goalie Kelsey Cormier made 10 saves for Hall-Dale (1-14). Madison Weymouth and Eleanor Folsom split the game for Ramblers and neither faced a shot on goal.

“Game after game after game, it wasn’t unusual for (Cormier) to have over 20 saves per game,” Corbin said. “That’s a lot of shots.”

Winthrop (14-1) will face the winner between Wells (8-7), which defeated North Yarmouth Academy 5-2 on Tuesday, in the semifinals Saturday with the time and location yet to be determined. Merrill said she actually scouted one of the regular season games between the Panthers and Warriors.

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