GRAY — Things are clicking and confidence is rising for the Freeport field hockey team. At just the right time.
Freshman Lilliana Larochelle scored twice, classmates Emily Groves and Reed Proscia added goals, and the Falcons downed Gray-New Gloucester 5-0 Wednesday.
That’s seven wins in eight games for the Falcons (9-3-1), who currently hold the third seed in Class B South with only the finale against Fryeburg Academy left in the regular season. Included in that run was a 1-0 win over York, the Wildcats’ only loss and a result that got the Falcons feeling like they could take on any of the region’s top teams.
“It’s a lot of kind of young players this year, so I think at the beginning of the year it was just trying to figure out who’s going to be playing, who’s going to be a contributor right away,” Coach Marcia Wood said. “No one really knew what we were going to do until some of those freshmen and the sophomores really stepped up.
“Having that York win kind of gave everyone that confidence, like ‘Hey, guess what, we can actually do this.'”
That confidence was still peaking Wednesday, as Freeport took a 3-0 halftime lead and kept the Patriots (3-8-2) off the board.
“We’ve all just been able to work together and push ourselves,” said senior captain Ava Gervais, who also had a goal. “There’s just a lot of excitement and drive.”
The Falcons went up 1-0 with 9:01 to go in the first quarter when Groves knocked the ball in from a group in front of the cage. Freeport took a 2-0 advantage when Proscia knocked down a clearing attempt and passed up to Sasha Nevins, who quickly tapped the ball over to Larochelle for a goal with 11:40 left in the second.
“It was a really good assist from Sasha,” Larochelle said. “You have to react really quick, especially because of the field we were on. Down there by the goal, it’s like dirt, so the ball’s moving fast. You have to react fast and go for it.”
Larochelle scored again off of a feed from Gervais with 5:14 left in the half, colliding with Patriots goalie Sam Poulin in the process.
“The goalie kind of took me down,” she said. “I didn’t feel it. She apologized. We’re good.”
Gervais made it 4-0 with 11:01 left in the third, and Proscia rounded out the scoring with 1:46 to play. Sydney Gelhar and Lizalyn Boudreau – another freshman – anchored the Freeport defense.
With the playoffs approaching, Wood hoped the Falcons can continue to “fly under the radar.”
“These past few games, a lot of different people have been scoring,” she said. “It’s just going from there and keeping that confidence up.”
Greta Tod nearly got the Patriots on the board with a reverse hit that rolled just wide with 13 minutes to go.
“We’re still developing,” Coach Jess Merrill said. “We’ve had opportunities, but it just didn’t work out. We’ve really been working on getting to our points, getting to where we need to inside the circle and taking quality shots.”
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