EL stayed with Cony for most of the game, but a pair of late penalty corner goals — one in the final two minutes of each half — made the difference as the Rams swiped a 2-0 victory from the Eddies at Sherwood Heights.
“This is a team, we knew even a couple goals wasn’t enough,” Cony coach Holly Daigle said. “Getting that one toward the end gave us a cushion there. But this is a really tough team and one goal was not even close to enough to feel comfortable.”
“We knew they were going to be tough, but I thought we played with them,” EL coach Greg Perkins said.
EL did more than keep up through most of the second half. Facing a one-goal deficit in the final 30 minutes, the Eddies turned up the pressure.
“We didn’t play very well in the first half after that initial flurry,” Perkins said. “We had some chats about what we needed to do, and I thought we came out and did that in the second.”
EL earned more penalty corners (5-3) in the second half than Cony, and kept the ball in the offensive end for the majority of the time, but couldn’t put the ball past sophomore keeper Jacqueline Carlton. With 13 minutes to play, two unmarked Eddies had the ball bound over their sticks at the left post, and two minutes later Cony’s Cami Lambert saved a goal off the line with a defensive stop.
“You need to finish, we just didn’t finish,” Perkins said. “When you get alone in front of the net, you have to put it home. But, something to work on.”
Cony finally put some pressure of its own on the EL defenders later in the second half, and Delaney Keithley made the most of the chance for the Rams, scoring with 1:40 to play on a penalty corner play.
“It’s something we’ve been really working on, trying to hit that long side, opposite side post and having somebody there to tip the ball in,” Daigle said. “I really think today, it was — of course the inserts on those corners were great — it was (Keithley) being patient, realizing no one was coming out to pressure her, and she has a nice strong shot. She had a second to look up, realize she had the shot, and it worked out.”
Keithley also had the Rams’ first goal, also on a penalty corner, with 57 seconds to play in the first frame. EL had a chance to stop that one, but two defenders reached for the ball just after it had crossed the line behind keeper Karli Stubbs (7 saves).
EL faces Skowhegan and Mt. Blue — two more upper-echelon teams — in its next two starts.
“I told the girls, ‘You have to start treating these like playoff games,'” Perkins said. “These are the teams we’re going to see in the playoffs, these are the teams we need to be able to beat.”
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