Guilford holds off Hand for second straight crown
WETHERSFIELD – If there were only a few more minutes in the game, Hand field hockey coach Sue Leckey said, the way her team was playing late in the second half of the Class M championship game Saturday afternoon, maybe the outcome would have been different.
Maybe – but field hockey games are only 60 minutes long and when the horn went off, topseeded and undefeated Guilford held on to beat SCC rival Hand 3-2 for its second straight Class M championship at Wethersfield High.
“I think the girls gave themselves a chance to win, I think we just ran out of time,” Leckey said. “I think we play another 10 minutes, we might be able to close that deal.”
Guilford (23-0) led 3-1 at halftime. With 43 seconds left in the game, Hand’s Amy Woods scored to make it 3-2.
“I knew they would [come back at the end],” Guilford coach Kitty Palmer said. “All three games we’ve played them, they’ve scored in the last five minutes. I feel like we played defense a whole heck of a lot in the second. I wanted our offense to get going. It was hard.
They were very good.”
Guilford, the SCC champion, beat Hand 4-2 on Oct. 1 and 2-1 in the SCC semifinal.
Hannah Tillier scored the first goal for Guilford with 22:58 left in the first half. Hand bounced a ball off the goalpost two minutes later but then Guilford was awarded a penalty stroke with 15 minutes left in the half and Maddie Epke scored. Five minutes later, Ava Bucci made it 3-0, Guilford.
Seventh-seeded Hand (15-7) did not give up. With 4:46 left in the half, the Tigers’ Grace Hartmann scored off a penalty corner.
Hand had plenty of chances to score – 14 penalty corners and 12 shots on goal. But Guilford’s defense and its junior varsity goalkeeper Julia McDonald (10 saves) kept the Tigers at bay. McDonald played the Class M tournament after starting goalkeeper Eve Young sustained a concussion in the SCC tournament.
“We didn’t really do anything different, we just got our game going a little better [later],” Leckey said. “They play such a highcaliber game that you can’t make a lot of mistakes and we were making some mistakes early on.”