WATERVILLE — Field hockey isn’t associated with the phrase “game of inches” very often. But after Saturday’s Class A championship, it may be.
Or perhaps Saturday’s game will go down as a game of perception.
The lone goal came with 2.1 seconds left. Kristen Murray’s game-winner left Skowhegan, the four-time defending Class A state champions, in a state of shock and sent Scarborough — the last team to beat the Indians in a postseason game (2009 state championship) — into a state of delirium.
A little over 21 minutes earlier, the Indians were the ones celebrating. Renee Wright’s shot from the top of the circle reached the back of the cage, apparently breaking the scoreless tie.
Official Anita Thomas quickly waived off the goal, ruling Wright, who had collected a pass out of a Skowhegan penalty corner, touched the ball before it had left the circle. By rule, the ball must clear the circle on a penalty corner
Wright was adamant the ball had cleared before her touch.
“I knew that it came out of the circle, but the ref said it didn’t and that’s her opinion,” Wright said. “I’ve had so many times where it hasn’t (cleared the circle) and been called. A state game like this is no time to mess around with it and worry about it coming out. You get it out, you bring it back in and you shoot.”
Skowhegan coach Paula Doughty argued briefly, but had to focus on helping her team to recover from the emotional letdown of going from tied to leading back to tied in an instant.
“It was hard. It’s hard whenever anything like that happens,” she said. “But both teams played a great game. It was about as close as you could get.”
“I was pretty mad, but I had to use it to motivate me,” Wright said. “I couldn’t let it be a setback.”
The Indians did indeed control play for much of the rest of the second half. But Scarborough played like it had a notion it already had taken the worst a state championship game could dish out emotionally.
“The ref made the right call,” Murray said. “(The non-goal) was a shock, but to get that second to breathe and focus and make sure that we can stay in it was really, really big for us.”
Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638
rwhitehouse@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @RAWmaterial33
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