Shenendehowa edges Shaker in OT

CLIFTON PARK » The Shaker field hockey team wasn’t undeterred traveling to face unbeaten Shenendehowa Wednesday night under the lights and on the artificial turf surface after suffering a 3-0 loss at home earlier in the season.

The Blue Bison gave the Plainsmen everything they could handle and more, relying on an almost unbreakable defense throughout regulation and down to the final minutes of 7-on-7 overtime. Almost.

Carly Pelletier broke through for the game-winning tally with 2:08 left to give Shenendehowa the 1-0 Suburban Council victory.

“We said ‘Keep it close, as long as we play with them it’s going to come down to who scores’ and unfortunately it took a whole game plus some to score,” Shaker coach Allison Abdelnour said. “I would have liked it to be a little more back and forth, but we did play a lot of defense and our defense was good and that’s what allowed us to hang into it all the way through until the last two minutes of overtime.”

Pelletier broke through after 60 minutes of regulation and the majority of the 10-minute reduced players overtime period.

“We were all hustling at the beginning because we were down a player so we were trying to get it up the field and not having the back,” Pelletier said. “Kelly Buckley kept hitting it up there for us and then I had a lot of urgency, I wanted to get that goal.

“Once I had that ball on the dotted (circle) I just knew I wanted to get it in. When I was right there I just tried to shoot it on my reverse and it went in.”

Shenendehowa was challenged by a five minute penalty issued to Jenna Graf that took her out of the contest and forced the Plainsmen to play a player down for the final 90 seconds of regulation and first three and a-half minutes of the overtime session.

“We kept saying ‘Get rid of the ball, don’t play with it,” Shenendehowa coach Jeanne Frevola said. “If you are going to have one cherry picker up, then everybody else is back. That was not a plan and we don’t practice that, (7-on-6). It’s a lesson learned that we need to keep our hands on our stick and they called it extremely tight.”

The Shaker defense and Shen’s failure to convert penalty corners kept the contest close. Blue Bison goalie Emily Polsinello turned back 16 shots on the night. The Plainsmen failed to convert on 10 penalty corners.

“I thought they clogged up the whole right side of the field, they had their sticks down, everywhere we were they were basically,” Frevola said. “They didn’t have the transition going the other way but they were able to do what Nisky did, but held it for the whole game.

“Their goalkeeper did a good job, we didn’t execute on our corners again, so I guess we’re going back to half an hour, 40 minutes of corners a night for practice, that was our big problem I think.”