FARMINGTON — No Mt. Blue High School senior wanted to end the season with a loss on senior night.
But the Cougars’ 1-0 loss in a girls’ soccer game to Mt. Ararat wasn’t exactly a letdown, either, under the lights at Caldwell Field on Monday night.
The playoff-bound Eagles (6-8) pressed all game, and the Cougars (3-10-1) certainly had their chances — especially in the second half when their offense suddenly came to life.
And there was a good reason why the Eagles scored only one goal: Mt. Blue senior goaltender Addie Schanz.
Schanz made 15 saves, and a handful of them were perfect examples of dazzling goaltending. She even stopped a penalty shot dead in its tracks.
“Our girls played pretty well today,” Mt. Ararat coach Sam Chard said. “I am very proud of the way they played. We controlled the game. Great passes off the ball runs. It’s beautiful stuff.”
Chard also acknowledged Schanz’s stubbornness in net.
“Great goalie,” Chard said. “You know, Mt. Blue played a great game, too. We had a lot of speed and we had a lot of pressure, so they did a nice job trying to contain that.”
In the first half, the Eagles dominated and eventually slipped in the only goal of game — and that took some doing against Schanz.
Isabel Burch punched in her unassisted goal with 10:32 left in the first half, and Mt. Ararat’s defense made it hold up the rest of the game.
In the second half, the tenacious Cougars’ lacked that finishing touch. They placed the ball in front of the Mt. Ararat net on several occasions, but Mt. Blue never could slip it past by Eagles goalie Katie Guerin.
“We kind of struggled with finishing all season long,” Mt. Blue assistant coach Griffin Conlogue said. “We luckily had a really, really strong defense that kept us in a lot of games and kept the scores low and gave us chances when we could score, but we just couldn’t find one today.”
Conlogue also praised Schanz’s exploits in net.
“Always good to have to have one of the best goalies in the league in your net,” Conlogue said. “She unfortunately had to get 20 to 30 shots on goal sometimes in a lot of games, and luckily we had her in there because we kept our goals down to one or two a game sometimes.”
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