La Plata edges Lackey in field hockey playoffs
Gordon scores with 6 seconds left to advance La Plata to 1A South Region final
Following a scoreless first half between two squads accustomed to playing one another in tight contests, the La Plata High School field hockey team emerged with a 2-1 victory over visiting Lackey on Monday afternoon in the Class 1A South Region Section II final when senior Katelynn Gordon scored just before the final whistle.
La Plata (8-6 overall), the top seed in the section, earned the right to face Patuxent in the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference championship game after winning the Potomac Division. The Warriors fell to the Panthers, 7-0, in that affair and midway through the second half of Monday’s game trailed the Chargers, 1-0.
La Plata will get to play at defending 1A state champion Patuxent for the 1A South final at 6 tonight.
Lackey seniors Jenna Clark and Kayla Nagle both worked well in transition throughout the season and Nagle fed sophomore Madison Furman with a long outlet pass that the Chargers forward tracked down and wristed past La Plata goalie Kelly Resendes for a 1-0 lead
with 17 minutes remaining. La Plata had actually won the previous meeting between the teams by the same score.
“Me and Jenna and Madison have been working well in transition and that play really worked out nice,” said Nagle, who also plays lacrosse for the school in the spring. “When Madison scored we were so happy. We knew it was going to be close, but we wanted to get one more goal.”
Lackey (8-6), the second seed, came close to adding an insurance goal moments later when Nagle sent a penalty
corner into the circle that Clark passed to Furman for a shot that just missed the target. The Chargers threatened on one other occasion, but a shot from Nagle also drifted wide of the box. Neverthess, the Chargers’ one-goal lead appeared safe at the time.
La Plata had several good chances just past the midway point of the second half and Gordon notched her first goal of the game with 11 minutes 37 seconds remaining not long after senior Hannah Armstrong sent a penalty corner pass into the circle that resulted in a scrum for the loose ball and Gordon, arguably the shortest player on the field, got to it and sent it past Lackey goalie Karissa Bannister.
“Hannah did a great job on the corners,”
La Plata head coach Pomie Radcliff said. “She sent the ball in each time and it got across for Katelynn, who was able to just get it in the box.”
With less than a minute remaining and the teams still deadlocked at 1 apiece, the region outing appeared headed for overtime, if not eventually penalty strokes.
La Plata got awarded several penalty corners in the last minute and Armstrong sent the last one into the box with less than 10 seconds remaining and Gordon somehow slipped it past Bannister for the game-winner right before the final whistle.
“It looked like we were going into overtime, but we really wanted to end it before then,” said Gordon, who plans
to attend the College of Southern Maryland next fall. “When Hannah sent in the corner, we all just went after it. I was glad it went in. I don’t think we wanted this game to come down to penalty strokes.”
Lackey coach Erika Prate, a Chargers alum and former player for the school’s field hockey team, commended her team’s performance on Monday and throughout the season.
“We knew it was going to be a close, hard-fought game,” Prate said. “We just could not avoid those corners. Those plays killed us, but I was proud of my girls. They fought hard to whole game and it was tough to lose it right at the end.”