LEWISTON — In a battle of Heal points positioning in Class A North, No. 3 Lewiston defeated No. 4. Mt. Blue 2-1 in overtime in field hockey action Saturday night at Don Roux Field.

Mya Grant scored at the top of the circle after the Blue Devils (6-4-1) were awarded a penalty corner. It was Grant’s first career goal.

“It feels great, we have been planning for this game for so long, they are a really good team,” Grant said. “We have been going to overtime a lot (this season). I am so excited to get the goal, especially that early into overtime.”

The players knew the magnitude of this matchup in the standings coming down the final stretch.

“We knew how big this game was,” Grant said. “We needed to win this game if we wanted to get anywhere in the top three (of Class A North) and stay there. This is a big win for us to stay up there.”

Jody Harmon, the Mt. Blue coach, knows all 14 games are equally important.

“We take one game at a time and every game is important,” Harmon said. “We are going to keep focusing on getting better and improving on things we need to improve on.”

The first quarter was mostly back-and-forth with the Cougars (5-4) setting the tempo early on. The Blue Devils flipped the field late in the quarter and nearly scored in the final seconds off a penalty corner but the shot just went wide.

Lewiston carried the momentum into the second quarter, with Fiona Landry putting the first goal on the board early in the frame.

“We came out and gave it our all, I am glad we scored early,” Lewiston coach Jenessa Talarico said. “I think they knew it was going to be a very back-and-forth game because we played them multiple times in the summer. We knew how important it was to come out of the gates strong.”

Mt. Blue regrouped and quickly responded. Eva-Marie Stevens was about 10 yards out with her back facing the Lewiston goal. She then spun herself around, set herself and ripped a shot past Lewiston goalie Kim McLaughlin to tie the game.

Both teams struggled to get any offense off of penalty corners in the second half. The Cougars had seven, including three in the third quarter.

“We just couldn’t get a shot on goal,” Harmon said. “We had a lot of chances right in front of the cage; we just couldn’t finish it.”

The Blue Devils, meanwhile, after having three penalty corners in the first quarter, did not have one in either in the second or third quarters. Lewiston then lost possession on its first corner in the fourth quarter. On the Blue Devils’ second penalty corner, in the final two minutes of the quarter, the ball went through the legs of a Lewiston shooter on the back post.

Lewiston did its best to get a goal in the final seconds of the fourth quarter but couldn’t get a meaningful chance off before the buzzer.

“The past couple of games we had trouble closing out in the fourth quarter,” Talarico said. “We were scored on two games in a row before this. We focused our talk before the fourth quarter on not letting down and picking up our intensity — hopefully putting one in before overtime. It didn’t happen but I thought the energy was much higher.”

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