Lady Blazers fight past the finish

BLAZER STADIUM, Oct. 18 –

The varsity field hockey team (3-8) defeated the Kennedy Cavaliers (3-8) Tuesday in an extremely close game, marking Blair's first home win of the season.

The first half was played mostly in Blazer possession, with many shots on Kennedy's goal. The second half was much of the same with neither team finding the net. At the end of regulation, the game was tied at 0-0. After two ten-minute overtime periods the score remained deadlocked, signaling the start of penalty strokes. Each team was allowed five shots on goal. The Blazers converted on two of their attempts to beat out the Cavaliers who finished with one goal.

Head coach Christine Denny gave credit to Kennedy's defense. "Their goalie was exceptional,” she said. Junior Addy Diaz was the top goalie in the county last year and earned a spot on the All-Gazette team with an impressive 208 saves for the 2010 season.

Going into the game, the Blazers were confident in their abilities, fresh off of a 8-0 win against Wheaton on Monday night. "I think that we kind of overlooked them,” senior goalie co-captain Molly Flannagan said.

Denny agreed that the Blazers should have been more careful with the way that they played. "It made us realize even more that we can't take a single game for granted,” she said.

It is unusal for field hockey games to go as far into a tie-breaker as the Tuesday night game went, but nonetheless, Denny is proud of her team's performance in overtime. [I was proud of] how calm everyone was, especially Molly,” she said. "To have to have strokes is a lot of pressure on the goalie.”

Going into overime was unexpected for the Blazers, who were dominant for most of the game. "It was suprising given how many offensive opportunities we had,” Denny said.

Looking back to the beginning of the season, the Blazers are happy with the progress that they have made. "We work a lot better as a team and we talk a lot more,” Flannagan said. "Our stick skills have improved so much,” she added.

According to Flannagan, the Blazers need to continue to work on scoring and finding opportunities to score. "One of our weaknesses was not being able to score,” she said.

With one regular season game remaining, the Blazers hope to continue their two-game winning streak. They plan on preparing diligently. "We're going to do conditioning and work on our shooting,” Flannagan said.

Varsity field hockey will play its next home game on Oct. 22 against Northwood.