Broncos in semis
Burrillville’s Jenna Deschamps scored a shootout goal to lead the Broncos over South Kingstown.
SOUTH KINGSTOWN — After two scoreless halves of regulation, two scoreless 10-minute overtime periods, and a tie after the first five-player shootout at Broad Rock Middle School, No. 5 Burrillville beat No. 4 South Kingstown’s field hockey team, 2-1, in a sudden-death shootout to advance past the Division II quarterfinals.
“I knew that it was sudden death,” senior Jenna Deschamps said about scoring the winning goal. “Which meant that if I scored, and the other girl didn’t, we’d win the game. I knew I had to get it done, had to execute, and I did.”
“And she was mad at herself,” Burrillville coach Sue Burgess said. “Because in the first five she didn’t score, and she was one of my top kids.”
After Rebel senior Natalie Towle made it 1-0 in the first shootout, Bronco senior Lindsey Salley tied it on Burrillville’s fourth of five attempts. After the third overtime round ended at 1-1, they moved onto a five-shooter-apiece format with the first to score winning as long as the other team didn’t match on their chance.
Deschamps was the first to take aim in the second shootout. She looked toward the right post and got SK junior goalkeeper Nina Byrne to dive and attack before switching the ball over and hitting the lower left corner of the cage to make it 2-1.
“My goal is to get the goalie to commit to one side of the field,” Deschamps said. “And then I drag it back to the other side.”
“She was just a little too wide on the first one,” Burgess said. “She wanted to go first because she wanted to score. You have to pick an order and the order makes a difference on who wins because of sudden death, so you want your top kids at the top. She said ‘I want to go first,’ so I put her first.”
“They’re a strong team,” Burgess said. “They were spread out well; they had some good strong hits and were able to penetrate, but my defense played great. And the goalie, Jade Simoneau, she’s a senior she was excellent.”
Both teams ended the season with 5-7-2 league records, but SK won the tiebreaker with a win in one of their two previous meetings. They tied 0-0 to open the season in Burrillville, and the Rebels won 1-0 on October 19 at home. The quarterfinal match turned out to be a best of three.
“We had been working on our offensive attack against a good goalie,” SK head coach Margaret McGregor said of Simoneau, who stopped 12. “We knew [Simoneau] was good coming in. We tried to do our best to get her moving, using a lot of cross balls and looking for opportunities.”