Lawrenceville bounces top-seeded Robbinsville
ROBBINSVILLE >> The way the Lawrenceville School field hockey team looked in its Mercer County Tournament quarterfinal at Robbinsville, the Big Red shouldn’t be an eighth seed and probably shouldn’t even be in the tournament.
They should be in some other tournament with super human field hockey players.
Eighth-seeded Lawrenceville eliminated the top-seeded and previously unbeaten Ravens, 5-0, Tuesday night to advance to a semifinal match-up with Princeton. The Big Red scored more goals on Robbinsville than every other team combined this season, as the Ravens (12-1-1) had only yielded four coming in.
“We weren’t thinking about the seeds too much,” said junior Tess Maloney, who scored two goals. “We just wanted to come in here and get the win. That’s all that mattered.”
Nor were they worried about Robbinsville’s defensive prowess.
“We really practiced hard two days before this and made sure we didn’t think about it too much,” Maloney said. “We just came out and played our game.”
It was an impressive game, indeed. Lawrenceville (8-4), whose four losses have come to three nationally ranked teams and state power Moorestown, put on a stick handling clinic with their passing and shooting.
Maloney got things started 7:14 into the game when she blistered a blurred shot that sizzled along the carpet and into the goal.
“We do that a lot in practice,” the Rumson resident said. “We work on our shots whenever we can. During our free time we go out to the turf and take shots all the time.”
The score seemed to ignite the Big Red even further.
“It definitely pumped us up and kept the momentum up for the rest of the game,” Maloney said.
While the first goal was pure power, the next one was pure finesse as Reilly Fletcher perfectly re-directed a pass from Megan Hillman to make it 2-0.
The Ravens nearly cut the deficit in half but goalie Morgan Cullen made a nice save on Megan Kratz’s shot off a penalty corner. Claudia Beller then made two nice centering passes that were shot wide by her Big Red teammates.
Beller took it upon herself to make it 3-0 when she lifted a rebound shot over fallen goalie Laura Redler with 31 seconds left in the half.
After being stunned pretty good, to the Ravens credit they began to play on equal footing for much of the second half. Kratz and Shea Walsh tried working a combination play that just missed connecting. A shot by Amanda Allen was saved and resulted in a wild scramble in front before Cullen grabbed the ball. Lawrenceville only had a 4-3 penalty corner advantage for the game.
“They definitely came back with a lot of intensity,” Maloney said. “We just tried to play a little harder than we did in the first half.”
They did just that and, after holding off Robbinsville, got two late goals from Maloney and Annie Morgan.
The Big Red are two wins away from winning their fifth MCT title in six years. Maloney missed out on the run of four straight as she joined the team last year.
“We’re definitely working for it,” she said. “We try not to think about it too much, but it definitely is in the back of our heads a little bit.”
As for Robbinsville, seeing a team as skilled as Lawrenceville can only help when the state tournament gets underway.
“I think we played really well tonight,” Maloney said. “But we try to play like this as much as we can.”
Which means they play nothing like an eighth seed. MCT QUARTERFINALS
ALLENTOWN 2, HUN 0 ALLENTOWN >> Mary Bellotti and Paigeg Zytkowicz caged second-half goals, lifting the defending champion Redbirds into the semifinals.
Katie White kept a shutout by making four saves, while Mary Catherine Shea turned away 11 for the Raiders.
PRINCETON 6, EWING 0 PRINCETON >> Chloe Koehler, Mariana Lopez-Ona and Avery Peterson all scored twice and the Little Tigers put a halt to the Blue Devils’ Cinderella run. NJISAA PREP B FIRST ROUND STUART 3,
NEWARK ACADEMY 2 LIVINGSTON >> Ali Hannah and Maria McBride scored second-half goals as the Tartans rallied from a halftime deficit to force strokes, which they eventually won, 3-2, to advance to the quarterfinals.
Alexxa Newman made 10 saves in the cage. 3:45 Florence at No. Burlington: 3:45 UEFA Champions League, Paris Saint-Germain vs. Basel: 2:30 p.m., ESPN2 UEFA Champions League, Barcelona vs. Manchester City: 2:30 p.m., FS1 UEFA Champions League, Arsenal vs. Ludogorets Razgrad: 2:30 p.m., FS2 UEFA Champions League, Bayern Munich vs. PSV Eindhoven: 2:30 p.m., FSN Women, International friendly, United States vs. Switzerland, at Sandy, Utah: 9 p.m., ESPN2