SCARBOROUGH — The Biddeford field hockey team is partying like it’s 1995.

The No. 4 Tigers put together an impressive all-around performance in Friday night’s Class A South semifinal as they earned a 2-1 win over the No. 1 Scarborough Red Storm — and punched their ticket to the regional finals for the first time in 22 years.

“It’s unbelievable because they are such a good team, and so much credit to them they really played great,” said Biddeford goalie Taylor Wildes on beating Scarborough. “We haven’t made it this far in like 20 years or something so for us it’s a huge deal.”

It’s also a big deal for Biddeford coach Caitlin Albert, who played for Scarborough during her high school career — and had never been able to beat her alma mater … until now.

“I think beating Scarborough is big. I played for Kerry Marriello … and I’ve never as a coach beaten Scarborough in four seasons of field hockey and seven seasons of lacrosse, so it means a lot to me because I went here,” said Albert.

Marriello was clearly disappointed after the game, but also happy to see Albert and the Tigers reach new heights.

“It was a well-deserved win for them,” Marriello said. “They have been knocking at the door for the past couple years, they’ve worked hard and they deserved this game, and I wish them luck for the future games they have ahead.”

The game was scoreless for nearly 12 minutes until Biddeford earned a penalty corner and would cash in. Peyton McKeown sent the ball in and Abby Allen would make a nice pass to Hailey Allen who put the ball in the back of the cage to make it 1-0 with 18:03 left in the first half.

The Red Storm came right back as Lauren Topchik beat the Biddeford defense and scored to tie things up with 16:32 remaining in the half.

Biddeford didn’t panic once Scarborough tied the game — in fact, the Tigers answered right back.

On another corner opportunity, the Tigers would execute a nice play with Hailey Allen sending the ball over to Abby Allen, who then passed it to Sarrah Marcotte and she would beat the Scarborough goalie to make it a 2-1 game with 15:14 left in the opening period.

“It’s all about executing … they did on those couple corners and we fell short,” said Marriello, who watched her team struggle on their own corner opportunities.

The Tigers nearly took a 3-1 lead 10 minutes into the second half as Hailey Allen rocketed a shot into the cage on a corner chance, but the referees said no goal as the Tigers never brought the ball back into the circle before firing a shot on goal. 

That insurance goal would have been nice for the Tigers, but it turned out they didn’t need it.

Biddeford controlled play for most of the second half, but the Red Storm would get three chances with under 20 seconds left to tie the contest.

All three opportunities would come on penalty corners with one coming at 20 seconds left, another with 8 seconds remaining and finally a corner try with time expired.

The Tigers defense would come up huge and stop all three corner tries. On the final try, Abby Allen raced out to get a stick on the ball and Megan Mourmouras sent it out of the zone to officially wrap up the victory for Biddeford.

“Oh my God, I was just praying ‘get it out of the circle, get it out of the circle,’ and we did,” said Albert on her mindset during the final 20 seconds.

Wildes didn’t have too busy of a night in the cage as her teammates were able to keep the Scarborough attack at bay for most of the game.

“Honestly, that’s the best game offensively and defensively that we’ve had. The halfbacks were stopping it coming into the 25, but it was rarely even getting into the 25 because our offense just played amazing tonight,” said Wildes.

McKeown, who was a key reason why the Tigers controlled possession for most of the night, knew what Biddeford needed to do to stop the potent Scarborough offense.

“A big thing we were talking about was if you lose the ball just get back … we were just working on hustling to the ball and pressuring close so they don’t have a lot of room to send it in,” McKeown said.

McKeown was thrilled to get to the regional finals by beating Scarborough — the team that knocked them out of last year’s playoffs.

“It’s so big, especially because we didn’t play them in the regular season and obviously they were (in) first place. Last year, we lost to them in the second round, so it was really big to beat them,” McKeown said.

The Tigers will now wait and see who they play in Tuesday’s Class A South championship game as Massabesic will host Westbrook this morning in the other semifinal clash.

“I think it’s going to be a good game, definitely,” said Wildes of today’s semifinal. “Westbrook has proven to be pretty strong and we almost lost to them, actually, and Massabesic is really strong too.”

No matter who they face on Tuesday, Wildes knows the Tigers need to head into that contest with the same confidence they had on Friday night in Scarborough.

“I think that we just have to come into it how we did with (Scarborough), we know they’re good, but we know we are good as well,” Wildes said.

— Sports Editor Pat McDonald can be reached at pmcdonald@journaltribune.com or at 282-1535 ext. 322. Follow the Journal Tribune Sports Department on Twitter @JournalTsports.