Falmouth Field Hockey Pulls Off Draw With Dolphins

By: Rich Maclone
Published: 10/26/12

 At quick glance, a scoreless field hockey draw looks to be a pretty boring game. That was certainly not the case for the Falmouth and Dennis-Yarmouth field hockey squads on Wednesday afternoon, though.

Neither team scored, but a whole lot happened. In fact, a lot of what happened was negative for the Clippers, but they found a way to steal a point from the Dolphins anyways.

"There are days that you have a tie, and it feels like you lost. Then there are days like this where you tie and it feels like you've won," Coach Janey Norton said.

Falmouth drew the ire of the officials all game long. Eight of Falmouth's 11 starters also play ice hockey, and Norton said that that lends them to playing a more physical brand of field hockey. On this day the refs very little patience for physical play, and they handed out cards like Halloween candy. Falmouth was cited with nine of the 10 cards in the game and had to play a third of the game down a player, and the final five minutes minus two players.

"The refs weren't tolerant of anything, and I think that we deserved some of the cards," Norton said. "It's incredible when you consider what we played through that we got out with a tie, it really shows the kind of persaverance that the kids played with."

Not only were the Clippers short on the roster, but they were also rolling the dice by starting an untested player in net. Starter Ashley Lima suffered an injury during the week and JV starter Mary Negri had been showing marked improvement of late. Norton decided to allow Negri to make the start against their rivals from D-Y, and she did the job, stopping all four shots on net that the Dolphins had in the game.

Falmouth's offense also was held to just four shots, which isn't that bad of a total when considering how the team played shorthanded most of the game.

"Honestly, I thought that we dominated the game," Norton said. "We were definitely the more aggressive team, which is why we got some of the cards, but I'd rather them be too aggressive than too complacent."

Norton said that the defensive trio of Casey Eustis, Taylor "Fuzzy" Sullivan and Hanna Callahan were solid throughout. Amy Wilson, Maddie Haberl and Anna Losordo were strong in the midfield and Rachel Moore and Caroline Estes worked extremely hard up front, especially when the team was shorthanded.

FHS, which is now 10-4-3 overall, plays its regular season finale this afternoon at Martha's Vineyard at 3 PM.

Leave a Reply

In order to comment you need to be logged in.