Determined Seahawks put resiliency on display again
Corey, Bresnahan, Clement score in South River’s third bounce-back win of season
There’s going to be some ups and down throughout a long season. The key is to not let the downs linger much longer than an occasional loss.
Coming off a loss to No. 5 ChesapeakeAA last Thursday, the No. 6 South River field hockey team found itself on the road on Tuesday playing another of the area’s top teams in No. 8 Severna Park. After the teams were scoreless for the first 38 minutes, South River scored two goals in a six-minute span and added another eight minutes later and went on defeat the Falcons, 3-1.
Allison Corey, Tommi Bresnahan and Darcy Clement scored the goals for the Seahawks, who have followed each of their three losses with wins.
“We lost our last game and we knew the county championship and home field advantage in the playoffs were on the line because our county is so tight,” South River coach Megan Atkinson said. “We knew we needed to come out and play well.”
South River (8-3) generated a lot of the early pressure and attempted eight penalty corners in the first half to five for the Falcons. Finally, on the Seahawks’ ninth of the game roughly eight minutes into the second half, Corey took the insert from Morgan Lee and sent a low shot that found the back of the cage for the first goal of the game.
“The first goal gave us a lot of confidence and pumped us up even more,” Corey said. “We were really excited to come out today and play Severna Park, and that first goal boosted our confidence.”
The Seahawks kept the pressure on and had three more corners over the next six minutes. They increased the lead to 2-0 with 16 minutes left when Bresnahan scored off an assist from Kyleigh Thorne.
Clement added the third goal on another corner at the eight-minute mark with an assist credited to McKenzie Jamison. Kaitlyn Wallace stopped five shots for the Seahawks.
“On the first few (corners), we just had some nerves and we needed to settle down and stop the ball properly,” Atkinson said. “Once we were finally able to do that, we were able to execute our three corners. If that’s all the shots Severna Park is going to give up, we have to make sure we put those in.”
Severna Park, coming off a win over Marriotts Ridge on Monday and with a game with Broadneck coming up on Thursday, spoiled the shutout when Lila Slattery scored in the final minutes. The Falcons suffered their second county loss and still have a game remaining with Chesapeake next week.
“I don’t feel like we played hard for 60 minutes, and I definitely feel South River did. Hat’s off to them,” Severna Park coach Shannon Garden said. “We worked on some things in practice that just were not coming together on the field today.”
Garden, the Falcons’ first-year coach who previously coached at Archbishop Spalding, led the the Falcons to five straight wins following a 2-2 start. Coming into Tuesday, Severna Park (7-3) had outscored its previous five opponents 20-3.
“There’s definitely been a learning curve, and that goes for me as well as the girls,” Garden said. “It’s been pretty positive. We’ve won the majority of our games, lost a few, so we’re just going to keep going forward.”