The squad mourns its loss. (Ethan Weiser’22/Staff)
On Thursday, November 5, the field hockey squad traveled to Thomas Worthington High to take on the Eagles, the only team to defeat the Vikes this season.
With huge crowds coming out and on top of the pressure of a knockout match, both the Eagles and Vikes were fired up. This energy led to intense play throughout the night.
Both sides were evenly matched since neither side had a noticeable advantage over the other. If anything, the Vikes were keeping Watterson playing on the counter, but the Eagles seemed to have prepared for this, and readied their defense for a long night, stopping the Vikes on all of their chances.
When Watterson did manage to take the ball off Academy, they had few numbers going forward and couldn’t make anything happen against a stout Academy defense led by Suzy L’Hommedieu’21 and Maya Walter’22. The only chances Watterson got were off of penalty corners which the Vikes quickly stopped.
This deadlock sent the match into overtime, with reduced numbers for each side ( a few players from each team are taken out for overtime to create space on the field as an attempt toend the game quickly in a golden goal system) didn’t change anything for the teams. Even with Academy’s senior captain Regan Cornelius along with Carolyn Vaziri’22 and Sarah Klingerman’21 breaking through for multiple good chances, shady defense from the Eagles stymied these attacks and kept the score even to send the match into a second overtime.
The Vikes continually rotated their two attacker through Vaziri, Klingerman, Adeti Mohanselvan’23, and others to confuse the Watterson defense, but this was ineffective.
With just about two minutes left in the second overtime, the referee took off Vaziri on a confusing and unnecessary call. One less person in the defense, though unmerited, proved enough for Watterson to break through Academy defense to win the game.
This loss was disappointing, but Academy can hold its head up high, knowing that the squad played its A game and deserved a win.
Despite this stellar play, one poor call was enough to end the Vikes’ season.
