Cardinals rule: Crofton scores decisive goal late
Junior midfielder Corcoran nets winner to get the Cards their 1st title in their 2nd year of existence
Her team battling for its first state title in just the second year of its existence, Crofton field hockey coach Amy Skrickus glanced at her star midfielder and saw the look. Junior Kylie Corcoran wasn’t going to let this chance slip away.
“You can tell when Kylie gets this fire in her eyes, and she had it at the end there,” Skrickus said. “She just goes full speed. She’s hungry. She wants that goal.”
With 4:05 left in a tie game, Corcoran got it, spinning around and firing a hard shot from the right side of the cage and beating the goalie to the far post to give the No. 4 Cardinals a 2-1 win over No. 6 River Hill in the Class 3A championship game at Stevenson University in Owings Mills.
In a game in which Crofton (16-2) was outshot 14-6 and gave up 16 penalty corners, Corcoran’s late heroics were the perfect complement to a stout defensive effort that included 12 saves from standout sophomore Ryleigh Osborne.
“I think [we] had [16] corners, and we tried lots of different things. We just didn’t get past them,” River Hill coach Shelly Chamness said. “We had lots of shots on goal, lots of corners, but that defense was the hardest defense we’ve come up against, for sure.”
For Crofton, which opened in 2020 for freshmen and sophomores, the effort resulted in the first Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association state title in school history in any sport. The school’s unified bocce team also won last spring in a sport not sanctioned by the state association.
“It’s something that we’ve been working on all year,” Corcoran said. “It was our goal from the beginning. I think when we got
in its second straight trip to the final.
It took Broadneck 34:03 to score as many goals against Churchill as the Bulldogs had previously given up all season.
Broadneck took the lead with 2:09 left in the first quarter when, after a corner, Maya Everett sent the ball toward the goal. Faith Everett, standing on the right side, redirected the pass across the goalmouth to Quigley, who knocked it in.
“It started from the top,” Quigley said. “You just have to finish it. You just have to be there.”
The Bruins were unable to capitalize on their other four corners of the half.
Early in the third quarter, however, they made it 2-0 when Lexi Dupcak fed Maya Everett from the right side, and the Maryland commit scored on a hard shot near the top of the circle with 10:57 left in the period.
“Lexi crossed it from the right side and I took it from the top right of their circle,” Everett said. “It just went into the left post.”
That was all the offense the Bruins would get, but also all they would need. With Churchill packing its defense into the circle, the Anne Arundel team was content to take what it was given.
“We knew that one of their slogans this season is ‘All gas, no breaks’... so our strategy was to be a speed bump,” Miller said. “Slow them down and try to play our game, rather than react to their game. They were really talented, really fit, really skilled players, and Broadneck brought their ‘A’ game.”
Goals: Assists: Saves: Half: