The Saint Mary’s Huskies defeated the UPEI Panthers 1-0 to win the Maritime university field hockey championship Sunday in Charlottetown.
Rebecca Pointon scored for SMU on a deflection off a penalty corner with just over five minutes remaining. The Panthers appeared to tie the game two minutes later off a scramble in front of the Saint Mary’s keeper. However, even though a goal was initially signaled, the call was reversed because one of the officials ruled the ball had hit a UPEI player’s foot.
UPEI entered the championship weekend in third place in the six-team league but peaked at the right time with two strong games in round-robin play Saturday (a hard-fought 1-0 loss to SMU and a 7-0 victory over UNB). They followed it up with a 1-0 victory in semifinal play Sunday morning over defending league champion Dalhousie Tigers.
Panthers’ head coach Sheila Bell knew her players were going to have to come up with their best effort of the season in three critical games to win the title — and they came heart-breakingly close.
“Saturday we had a phenomenal game against SMU. Everything we did worked. We had our small ball game going, we had communication going, we were finding the lanes, we created corners and opportunities to score and played great defence.
“We kept going on the same path on Sunday against Dal. Everything was working,” she said of her team’s win, its first over the Tigers this season.
However, keeping up that level of intensity for three games is difficult, even though they “gave their heart and soul” in the final, said Bell.
“Their effort was there. It was just that the little things that worked for us in the two games before were not quite working as well today in the third game . . . . They gave everything they had, they were just one goal short.”
SMU head coach Sharon Rajaraman agreed UPEI had a tough road to the final.
“With UPEI, from the beginning of the season to the end, they just got better and better. They’re a tough team to beat. They had a great game against us (Saturday). Then they came up big against Dal this morning, and I think maybe they were a little worn down by that. To come out and play three tough games in a row is difficult.”
Rajaraman added her team relied on its strengths in the win — a stingy defence that surrendered no goals all season and well-executed penalty corners.
“When you get up against the top teams in any league, it all comes down to your special teams, and I thought our penalty corner was what was going to win it today and it ended up that’s what it did come down to,” said the coach, whose team will move on to compete at the OUA championship at the University of Guelph the last weekend of October.
