YARMOUTH — Yarmouth started fast and finished tough to pull out a 2-1 win against Kennebunk in a Western Maine Conference field hockey game Wednesday.

The win probably won’t be enough for the Clippers to leap over the Rams in the Class B South Heal point standings, but it should be enough to give Yarmouth home-field advantage in the first round of the regional tournament.

Yarmouth (9-4) thoroughly dominated Kennebunk (10-3) during the first half, with the first 14 minutes of the game played on the Rams’ side of the field.

“To keep a great team out of our end for the first 14 minutes is exceptional,” said Amy Ashley, in her first season coaching the Clippers after 10 as the coach at Cheverus.

“We knew we didn’t want to go into overtime. We wanted to come out hard early and maintain the pressure. It was nice to start well and finish well.”

It was a better result for Yarmouth than the last meeting between the teams, Sept. 20 at Kennebunk, when the Clippers held the upper hand but were unable to get the ball past goalie Liv Kudas. The Rams pulled out a 1-0 win when Brittney Gregoire scored an overtime goal on a penalty corner.

“The last time we dominated but we didn’t put the pressure on their goalie,” Ashley said. “She’s great, and you really have to put the pressure on (because) maybe you can get one of those rebounds. You know she’s going to make the first save, and we really concentrated on scoring after the second or third save.”

Kudas, who also is the goalie for Kennebunk’s lacrosse team, made 10 saves but it wasn’t enough to keep the Clippers off the scoreboard this time.

“We really worked (in practice) on putting everything towards goal and stopped looking for those little tiny passes that have been taking us away from (scoring) goals in the past.”

Ally MacLeod opened the scoring eight minutes in when she converted a feed from Eliza Lunt shortly after the first penalty corner of the game.

With less than eight minutes remaining in the first half, Sophia McGrath sent a hard shot from 10 yards out on the right into the far side of the cage to make it 2-0.

“You could tell (Yarmouth) was ready to play that game, (and) we knew that going in,” Kennebunk Coach Kayla Billings said. “We had a target on our back and they were coming for us. Unfortunately, the first 15 minutes of the game they completely took advantage of that and score two quick ones on us.”

The Rams, who appeared destined to end the regular season ranked second behind unbeaten York in the Class B South standings, pulled to within a goal during the second half when Katherine Koch turned a pass from Lindsey Gregoire into a goal on Kennebunk’s third penalty corner of the game with less than 16 minutes left.

The loss snapped the Rams’ nine-game winning streak.

“We’ve been down 1-0 in a game, but we haven’t been down 2-0,” Billings said. It was a lesson for us that no matter what happens we can’t give up. We have to play 60 minutes of the game. We can’t play 45 of that.”