“I saw her coming, and I was saying, ‘Brooke (Haskell) behind you, Brooke behind you,'” Wood said.

Too late for anything else, Wood asserted herself, cut down the angle and kicked Philbrick’s tip aside with 10:10 to play in regulation, turning back Lisbon’s last great scoring chance to help preserve for Winslow a 2-1 victory in the Class C state field hockey championship at Thomas College on Saturday.

“Things like that happen. It’s good field hockey,” Wood said. “She got a good tip on it, but we practice tips so much every day, I’ve become used to it and I was able to adjust.”

Her adjustment lifted the Black Raiders to their first state crown since winning five Class B titles in six years from 1997-2002.

“Delaney has cat-like reflexes,” Winslow coach Mary Beth Bourgoin said. “She really hasn’t seen a lot of action throughout the season. We had some tough games against Gardiner and Mt. View, but there were times where she didn’t see a lot of action. I know she can rise to that.”

Jessica Greeley scored twice for Winslow. Haskell had the other, playing forward on a Black Raiders penalty corner try in the first half.

“(Greeley) is a junior, she works hard in the offseason on her game,” Bourgoin said. “She’s just an amazing field hockey player. She grew a lot as a player through the season. You see them emerge out of this young, almost full-of-energy talent, and it just explodes. It’s been great to watch.”

The Greyhounds’ surprise run back to the state title game (they won the Class C crown in 2012) ended abruptly Saturday, but they didn’t go down without a fight.

“I told them on the bus on the way here, we upset the No. 1, we upset the No. 2, we lost 11 seniors last year and no one thought we’d be here,” Lisbon coach Julie Petrie said, choking back tears. “We have a great group of kids They are like a family. They work together. There’s no drama. I think that’s why I get so emotional about this. I couldn’t ask for a better group of girls.”

The Greyhounds showed their mettle early. Just 2:19 into the contest, Greeley fired a hard shot from the top of the circle that beat keeper Victoria Swan to the right side of the cage for a quick 1-0 Winslow advantage.

“My first reaction was, ‘Oh no,’ and then I thought to myself, ‘OK, we’ve been in the situation before, more than enough times, probably more than we should have,'” Petrie said. “We answered right away, which was huge. Had we not, it could have been ugly.”

“We watched film of them from their Western Maine championship, and when Oak Hill scored against them, they were very quick to answer, and they were always really competitive and they wanted it so much,” Wood said.

The Raiders’ scouting report was accurate.

Three minutes later, Charlotte Mooney answered with a goal to knot the game at 1-1.

“We’ve worked on that whole mental piece of this game, not just this year but for many years,” Bourgoin said. “If you get scored on, you just come back. It doesn’t mean the game is over.  You build back from that. That was a big focus for us all season long.”

Winslow continued to press the issue. With 11:22 to play on one of the Raiders’ 10 penalty corner tries in the opening half, Haskell buried a shot to put the Eastern C champs ahead one more time, at 2-1.

“We played a little intimidated, I think,” Petrie said. “We played a little more defensively minded than offensively. we talked about at halftime, we’re not going to play their style, let’s play our style, try to get an offensive spurt, some offensive energy.”

“We knew at halftime, when we talked, we knew they would make adjustment in that next 10 minutes,” Bourgoin said. “We really focused on making sure we had girls marked. we know they have some girls who are pretty key players, so defensively, we made sure to mark them.”

Marking only worked for so long. The Greyhounds started to shake free and control play through the middle part of the second half, leading to Philbrick’s chance on Wood, and another tough chance for the Winslow keeper on one of three Lisbon penalty corners late in the game.

“I’ve gotten used to it, but sometimes she can be so nonchalant about the way she goes to it,” Bourgoin said of her keeper, “But I have full confidence in her and I knew she’d be able to rise to the challenge. She didn’t lose her composure.”

“I really thought we were going to score there with a few minutes to go. It just wasn’t meant to be today,” Petrie said. “That’s just sports. They worked hard. Winslow’s a very good team. You can’t take that away from them.”

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