Clippers throw away late lead

La Salle rallies to down Cumberland

CUMBERLAND – Cumberland coach Mary Kiley wasn’t terribly pleased with her squad’s eventual 1311 Division I loss to La Salle at Tucker Field on Friday night.

What made it worse? It came on senior night, when the squad was honoring its four soon-to-be graduates.

The Clippers held a commanding 9-6 advantage with 21:43 remaining in the second half, but allowed the Rams to outscore them, 7-2, over the final 21:31 to close its league campaign at 5-7.

Kiley’s crew also yielded three unanswered tallies in the last 12:20.

“We made way too many mistakes and lost too many draws in that second half,” Kiley stated after her club entered the break with an 8-6 lead.

“We’d gain possession on defense after (junior keeper) Sarah (Duggan) made a save, but then we’d give it away; we made too many turnovers in transition.

“You know, I’ll bet we had 20 total turnovers for the game,” she added. “We’ve already made the playoffs (CHS is now 5-6 with one match remaining at Wheeler at 4:15 p.m., Monday), but we can’t expect to do anything if we continue to play like this. All of our issues right now stem from the turnovers, and they were unforced errors, no less.

“We never lost the lead in the first half, but we turned the ball over there, too. We’re better than this.”

Sophomore Hannah Guerin led the Clippers with four goals, while juniors Elise Curran and Sophie Goddard and senior Mackenzie Cotter each posted two tallies.

For La Salle, senior Eliza Mahoney registered five scores, while frosh Grace Dobrzynski managed a hat trick with three assists; classmate Amanda Davis three more scores; and sophomore Samantha Collins and juniuor Jen Rickard a goal each.

Senior Rebecca Levesque had given the Clippers a 9-6 advantage just 3:07 into the final session, but Davis and Collins sliced the deficit to 9-8 in the span of 3:03, yet Cotter raced downfield and planted a try past La Salle sophomore goalie Alexa Morra ti push it back to 10-8 at the 18:17 mark.

Exactly 2:17 later, Dobrzynski looped around the cage, and ripped a shot through traffic to close it to 10-9.

Guerin delivered CHS’ final tally on a bouncer in front of the cage with 15:24 remaining in regulation to snag its last two-goal cushion, though Mahoney converted a superb feed from Dobrzynski at 13:52 to slice it to 1110, and she tied it 92 ticks later, smoking in an attempt under the crossbar.

Only 27 seconds after knotting it, Davis snapped in an unassisted goal with 12:20 left to give the Rams their first lead of the contest.

Only 3:24 existed on the scoreboard clock when officials awarded Goddard with a penalty try, but Morra (16 saves) mustered a great stop on a bouncer, and Mahoney sealed the verdict 61 seconds later.

Duggan produced 16 stops as well for the Clippers.

“In that second half, we got some draw controls and they turned the ball over more, but we became more patient, which was what I asked of the kids at halftime,” La Salle head coach Kim White stated. “I also thought that our shot selection was better down the stretch.

“This is a big win for us going into the playoffs, especially if we have to play Cumberland in the first round,” she added. “That’s possible, because they beat us in our first game, 12-11, and we took this by two. If we do play them, we’d have the home-field advantage because we’d own the first tiebreaker [goal differential in headto-head contests].”