Ocean City players decided they weren’t underdogs
OCEAN CITY — The Red Raider field hockey team entered Friday afternoon’s game against 8-0 St. Joseph of Hammonton with a 2-3-1 record. The Ocean City High School girls had lost to St. Joseph 5-2 earlier in the season and were coming off a loss earlier in the week.
Still, they didn’t consider themselves underdogs.
The Ocean City girls proceeded to do something they and seven other teams hadn’t done so far this season: They beat St. Joseph and put in five goals against a team that had allowed four goals in only one of its previous eight games, mostly lopsided wins.
“It took a lot of grit and a lot of determination,” Ocean City coach Carole Williams said. “The girls played for a full 60 minutes. We’ve pieced together a half here, a half there. Today, they pieced together an entire game and never let up.
“They never backed down. They kept going to the ball. They kept forcing the corners,” she said. “They did all the things we’ve been working on. They put it all together today.”
Nina Aponte put St. Joseph on the board 6 minutes into the game. It would be the only lead for her team.
Red Raider Lyla Clark, on an assist from Sofia Wright, tied the game 1-1 at the 4:32 mark. Ocean City got the first lead of the game when Lily Cozamanis scored 3 seconds before the first period expired. Clark assisted on the goal.
“I loved scoring today,” Clark said. “It made me feel so good and I’m excited for the next game.
“Our first game we did lose to them, but we brought it back, had high intensity and we killed it,” Clark added. Late in the game, she would score the winning goal.
The first nearly 12 minutes of the second period was a stalemate until Marley Dwyer, on a penalty corner put-in by Clark, lofted the ball over the defenders’ heads and into the goal.
“It was a team effort to put that in the back of the cage,” Dwyer said. “They’re an amazing team, all credit to them. I feel like we played really, really hard and played to the last whistle and gave it all we had.”
With 7 seconds left in the period, on a broken-down foul, St. Joseph was awarded a penalty stroke. Ocean City goalie Devin Dolka guessed correctly and dodged to her right to deflect the St. Joseph penalty stroke.
“I guess the side that feels right, where the shooter is going to be, and it’s a 50-50 shot and I’m lucky enough to have gotten that. We only won by one goal, so I guess it was meant to be,” Dolka, who fought off other attacks and made 10 saves in the game, said about deflecting the penalty stroke.
With Ocean City up 3-1, the third period belonged to St. Joseph as the visiting team continued to press the attack. Stella Devlin scored with 6:15 left in the period and then tied the game at 3-3 with 2:16 on the clock.
Thirty seconds into the fourth period, Raider Stevie Wright was awarded a penalty stroke on another broken-down foul. She shot low and to the right of the box, scoring the goal and putting Ocean City back in front 4-3.
“I think there’s a lot of nerves built up, but we’ve been practicing a lot,” Wright said of the penalty stroke. “I just took a deep breath and I told myself I was going to make it and I did.”
“We all had the confidence in her,” fellow captain Casey Adamson said.
Stevie Wright said the win felt good especially coming off a tough loss to Our Lady of Mercy Academy three days earlier. (Ocean City lost 2-1 after a scoreless first half. The OLMA goalie turned away 13 Red Raider shots; Sofia Wright scored the lone goal for the Red Raiders.)
“I think that we really pulled through (today) and that we all played to our potential and what we had in us. We took it all the way and we gave everything that we had,” Wright said.
Six minutes after the penalty stroke, Devlin earned her hat trick, scoring a third time to tie the game at 4-4.
The teams traded attacks for the rest of the period and St. Joseph players celebrated what they thought was the go-ahead goal, but the referee overruled it because the shot went off a player’s body.
With 8 minutes left in the game, St. Joseph put on a furious attack but was repeatedly rebuffed by the Red Raider defense, which would quickly transition into an attack of its own.
On a penalty corner with just over a minute to go, Clark scored the game-winner from just to the right of the goal, putting Ocean City up 5-4.
St. Joseph made a few more runs deep into Red Raider territory but couldn’t get the equalizer. The buzzer sounded and Ocean City celebrated.
“We knew it was going to be a tough game but we were fired up,” Adamson said. “We just had faith in ourselves. We knew we had to play with intensity and grit the entire game,” she said, acknowledging her team hadn’t always put two good halves together earlier in the season.
“At halftime something switched and we knew this is our game, that we’re going to win,” Adamson said. “We really needed that. After some losses, this is great for our team and we’re only going to get better from here.”
Coming in the records made it look like a mismatch, an 8-0 team versus a 2-3-1 team, but that wasn’t the mindset of the Red Raider girls.
“This isn’t like we’re, like, the underdogs. I think we came in and we were thinking it’s an even match,” Adamson said. “We came in with confidence.”
Williams agreed there was no underdog mindset.
“We watched game film yesterday. We talked about the things that they do well. We talked about the things that we do well,” the coach said. “We’ve talked about the fact that we are really, really strong in the center of the field, in between the twenty-fives. And we needed to make sure that we were strong in our defensive 25 and then our offensive 25.
“Today we were able to make all of those things happen,” Williams said. “We had a rough game earlier in the week and I feel like they channeled that and brought it here and showed what they’re really worth.”
“I think with all the work we put in the preseason and during practice, we deserve this win,” Dolka added. “We’re out here, we’re getting better and we are going to be that team that in the future that is going to be feared that you have to play against.”
St. Joseph goalie Katie Canova made four saves in the game.
At 8-1, St. Joseph remains atop the American Division with Hammonton (7-1) next and Ocean City (3-3-1) third.
– STORY and PHOTOS by DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
