LISBON — Near the end of Lisbon’s loss to Boothbay last month, Ali Sult jumped toward the baseline in an attempt to steal an inbound pass.
Sult ended up fouling Boothbay’s Hannah Gentry with no time left on the clock, as both players went tumbling out of bounds.
There was less than a second remaining in the game when the ball was thrown in, and the Greyhounds trailed by 24 points. There was no chance of a comeback, but there was time left on the clock.
“We play until the end of the game. We play until there is no game left to play. No matter what,” Sult said.
That inbounds pass only happened because Lisbon’s Mallory Fairbanks knocked a pass out of bounds with 0.7 seconds left.
“They’re hustlers,” Greyhounds coach Julie Petrie said after the Boothbay game. “They give it all and all the time. No matter if we’re down 100, up 100, we play to the clock.
“They’re a great group of kids, I love them to pieces, and they work their tails off, no matter what the outcomes is. You can’t ask for more that.”
When asked to describe her team, Petrie said: “We’re not very big, but tenacious. I think that’s probably a good word for them. And (they have) a never-give-up attitude; they always want to work and get better.”
The nonstop, play-to-the-buzzer hustle is a team-wide attribute. It doesn’t start with Sult and fellow senior Bree Daigle, and neither are regulars in the starting lineup, but those two perfectly embody Lisbon’s scrappiness.
“Ali will give you 120 percent, and same with Bree,” Petrie said. “You know, they have the ability to break the starting lineup, but really, their best energy is coming off the bench.
“Ali will sacrifice her body for every ball. She’s our tallest girl and she’s a goalie (on Lisbon’s soccer team), so she has a knack for the ball. And Bree Daigle is one of our best defenders. I call her the little gnat because she’s just everywhere, and she works tirelessly. Really great spark plugs.”
Boothbay, one of the state’s top Class C teams, features 6-foot-1 Faith Blethen. For parts of the last month’s game, Petrie assigned 5-foot-1 Daigle to defend Blethen.
Daigle, whom Petrie calls “Bagel,” took to the assignment with vigor, allowing Blethen little space and working to prevent her from even getting the ball.
“Coach always calls me the person to pick at someone, to always, like, annoy them. I’m the bug,” Daigle said with a laugh. “I absolutely love defense. I’m kind of like the Defense Man of this team. I like it more than I like offense.
“I don’t know, I guess putting the pressure on feels better than getting the pressure on you. So I enjoy it more. And it’s great working with the team and talking with the team on defense, because that’s when we really communicate.”
Petrie said the offense has made strides this season, with seniors Kaylin Le and Kipri Steele and freshman Giana Russo leading the attack, but defense is still the catalyst to Lisbon’s season.
“We try to, defensively, create our offense out of that, and hopefully if we play at a high level, things will start happening for us,” Petrie said.
No matter how consistently a coach preaches about it, a team’s hustle is often dependent on how its offense is playing. It’s a lot easier to go all-out when your shots are going in.
Not the Greyhounds. They struggled to score for most of their 39-35 loss to Oak Hill, but they continued flying around on defense and attacking the glass on missed shots. They nearly hustled their way to a come-from-behind win — the score was tied with less than 30 seconds remaining before the Raiders scored four straight points.
“Every once in a while, it starts to get harder to hustle,” Sult said, “but you realize if you don’t, you’re just going to get behind more, and at that point, it’s like, yeah, we have to keep going, it doesn’t matter, we can do this.”
Sult and Daigle both gave credit to Petrie for the team’s tenacity, as well as to the players on the team.
“Coach works us hard during practice, and then a lot of the motivation comes from us girls on the court,” Daigle said. “In the locker room, we’re always like, ‘This is a huge game; every game is a huge game,’ and we always want to do our best and always want to put in 100 percent, and win, of course, and so it just comes from the drive within, and it just really clicked within all of us.”
Although Lisbon’s won’t-stop attitude has been magnified in some of its losses, losing hasn’t been its reward most of this season. The Greyhounds entered Thursday night’s game against Madison with a 6-3 record.
Their crowning achievement so far this season was 46-38 win over Class C power Monmouth on Dec. 29. In that game, Lisbon trailed by eight points in the third quarter before chipping away at the lead and eventually overcoming the Mustangs.
“Everybody contributed that game, I thought,” Petrie said. “There were hustle plays everywhere. We just clicked. We didn’t play with fear, which I think — you know, you play a big team and you think, ‘Oh, my goodness, they’re really good.’ We just went in with a why-not attitude, and played hard. And it happened.”
Halfway through the season, Lisbon is one win away from matching its win total from last season. Seven wins, though, wasn’t enough to make the postseason in 2015-16, and that’s what the Greyhounds are aiming for this year.
“We’re really fighting to make playoffs this year. We’ve been so close the last couple years,” Petrie said.
“And we’re in that Class B South, and you know you have to beat quality teams to get in, and we’ve had that conversation, like, you know, we have to get those big wins or the wins that were close, and be able to play with these teams.”
To reach their target, the Greyhounds will keep hustling until the final buzzer of the final regular season game, Feb. 6 at Monmouth.
“If you’ve never seen our team play, we play with determination,” Sult said. “That’s the one word I can come up with right off the top of my head for my team: determination.”
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