WESTBROOK – The Westbrook field hockey team had done everything right on Sept. 26.
They’d recovered from a slow start and managed the pace of the game against Kennebunk. They’d outshot the Rams. And they’d stacked up 13-0 corners over two halves. They only thing Westbrook had failed to do was score.
And that gave Kennebunk a chance. Deadlocked at 0-0 heading into overtime, the two teams briefly battled at midfield before Kennebunk took it down to the Blazes’ end.
There, the Rams racked up four corners, and peppered shots at Westbrook senior goalie Maryssa Arsenault, who made three incredible saves – including a kick save and a reaching deflection with her stick – on shots by Kennebunk sniper Jenn Davis. It was ugly, but Arsenault coolly shepherded her team through the peril until Westbrook (6-2) finally cleared the ball out of their own end.
“Two words, nerve-wracking!” Aresenault said about the overtime flurry after the game. “But I told them (during the first corner) that we can do this, and if you just get the ball out, we can do it. The (shots) were just coming in, and I remembered that to get my stick down, and I felt it hit. We did good, though. We tried really hard, and it showed in the end.”
That end came shortly after Kennebunk failed to convert on their fourth corner, and Westbrook managed to gradually move the ball out to midfield. With just two minutes left, the Blazes’ Ally Lemay broke free of a knot of players near the center line and rushed down the left side, with teammate Katie Berry streaking to her right. Lemay dished to Berry, who made it by a final Kennebunk defender, and had a wide-open look at the Rams’ goalie Katherine Cotton from eight yards out. It was the best chance that any of the Blazes had seen all afternoon, and Berry did not fail to capitalize, going low and right for the 1-0 game-winning goal.
“Ally was moving it down the field, and I was thinking ‘I am so confident in Ally Lemay, I know she can bring it down here, and all I have to do is get open, and then she will pass it my way, and I can shoot it,’” Berry said. “She got it to me, and I got by one girl, and I shot it.”
“We practice a lot on hitting the ball where we want to shoot it, and we have realized that the corner is the hardest place for a goalie to defend,” Berry continued. “(Head Coach) Beth (Murphy) is always saying that you don’t shoot it right at the goalie, because she is going to stop it.”
As the Blazes swarmed each other in front of the Kennebunk net, the Rams streamed off the field, many in tears. It was the third straight loss for Kennebunk.
“We definitely don’t feel good about it,” said Kennebunk Head Coach Kayla Hinkley. “It’s one of those things where we couldn’t mesh today. Things were happening for us today on the field, and when you kind of come out into that overtime and you are dominating and then it goes down to one minute left and they score that winning goal, it kind of crushes your heart a little bit.”
The Rams forced overtime by way of their tenacious defense, which stopped six first half corners by Westbrook, and seven more after the break. Although the Rams dominated the opening 10 minutes of the game, afterwards Westbrook recovered from their early fatigue – which Murphy attributed the unseasonable humidity and heat Monday – and largely kept play on the other end.
Few of Westbrook’s corners produced any close calls, and at the start of overtime, the Blazes looked to end things quickly by setting up long passes into the Rams’ end. When that failed to work, Kennebunk temporarily gained control, and Arsenault had to save the day in order to give Berry and Lemay a chance to end it.
“They fought hard,” Murphy said. “This is a brand new team this year. And we need to know how to win the big ones – these are the ones that count the most. We have been winning some games – not that they weren’t challenging – but this was different, and to take it in overtime (was big). The kids stepped up – Katie and Ally, they are a great combination. And in a 7-on-7 that’s what you have got to get; that breakaway.”
Westbrook’s Katie Berry is just seconds away from winning the
Comments are no longer available on this story