Lake Region 2

Wells 2

The Lake Region field hockey team rallied from two goals down to force overtime at Wells last Saturday morning. But even the extra 16 minutes of play weren’t enough to decide a winner as the Western Maine Conference foes settled for a 2-2 tie.

The Warriors took advantage of a pair of scoring opportunities early in the first half with Hilary Bouchard and Kelsey Lewia both finding the net for a 2-0 Wells lead with 10:48 to play in the first half.

“They (Lake Region) knew they were playing a pretty good team,” Lake Region coach Dagney Leland said about her own players. “We just had to pick up the intensity – we had to work through it.”

And the Lakers did indeed pick up their intensity in the latter stages of the first half.

Finally, with 1:54 left before the half, Ciara Smart cut the Lakers’ deficit in half with an assist from Doree Bell. “That really helped to start us off and it let us know that we could do this – we’re in the game,” said Leland.

The Lakers used the momentum they gained from Smart’s goal to their advantage in the opening moments of the second half as they pressured the Wells defense. Lake Region’s Lauren D’Ascanio scored off a penalty corner to tie the game at two with 24:56 left in regulation.

Wells had a series of corners at the midway point of the half that didn’t produce any shots on Lakers’ goalie Rachel Curtis.

With less than nine minutes to play, the Lakers’ Doree Bell went in on a breakaway for what could have been the go-ahead goal, but Wells netminder Deanna Gamache made a kick save to keep the score deadlocked.

The Lakers had one last really good opportunity to pull ahead when Smart passed to Bell in front of the Wells goal, only to have Gamache make another point-blank stop sending the two evenly-matched squads to overtime.

Both teams played with that sense of urgency only overtimes can create, but neither managed to score the game-winner in the two eight-minute extra periods.

“Cutting to the ball today was our key thing,” Leland said. “Trying to get to the ball first and pass it off quickly is what we’re working on. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t work – it just depends on who we play and if we’re on our game or not.”

The tie moved Lake Region is now 2-3-1 on the season and they improved to 3-3-1 with a 5-0 win over Yarmouth on Tuesday. Bell had a goal and three assists in that game and Carolynne Skarbinski, D’Ascanio, Angie Adams and Chelsea Murch also had goals for the Lakers.

The Lakers’ busy week continued with a home game with York on Sept. 25 after the Lake Region Weekly’s deadline) and another home contest on Saturday morning against Greely.