DIXFIELD — The work the Dirigo field hockey team put into penalty corners paid off in its 4-1 victory over Maine Central Institute in a Class C North quarterfinal on Wednesday.
All of the third-seeded Cougars’ (12-3) goals were scored on corners. The sixth-seeded Huskies (6-9) scored once in four corner attempts.
Dirigo moves on to face either No. 2 Foxcroft or No. 7 Stearns/Schenk in the semifinals later this week.
The Cougars, who were successful on four of five attempts Wednesday, spend 30 minutes in each practice on offensive and defensive penalty corners.
“We have been working on our corners a lot in practice because we had a hard time with them throughout the season,” junior Lana Waite said. “So we’ve been prioritizing them.”
Waite scored twice, while freshmen Madisyn Bradeen and Mackenzie Woods each had a goal.
“It’s a big thing for us, because we’re both freshmen and it’s just like a big thing to score in our first playoff game as freshmen,” Bradeen said.
The Cougars jumped out to an early lead on of their first corner of the game when Bradeen got her stick on the ball and put it in the cage 3:40 into the first quarter.
“I didn’t really plan on scoring, but I saw the ball and I just reached my stick out and then just went in,” Bradeen said.
That was Dirigo’s only shot on goal in the first half.
MCI flipped the field for the rest of the opening quarter, but the Cougars in kept the Huskies out of the circle and didn’t allow any shots on goal.
“They do a good job,” MCI coach Terri Jean Wilkinson said of her team. “They’re resilient. We have low numbers, but, yeah, sometimes it just takes a little bit too much space between the offense and the defense.”
MCI had two opportunities to get on the board on back-to-back corners late in the second quarter, but Dirigo’s defense again cleared the ball out of the circle.
The Cougars received two corners early in the second half. On the second, Waite put the ball past MCI goalie Izabella Bertocchi 1:48 into the third period.
“It was like hidden under her pad, and I just hit it and there was so many people going after it,” Waite said.
The offense struck again on another corner later in the third. Bradeen sent the ball towards the cage and Woods knocked it in at the 9:19 mark.
Along with the two freshman goal scorers, Dirigo coach Gretchen Curtis lauded the defense of another first-year player, Emma Witas.
Curtis said that the freshmen, though young, have been important contributors for the Cougars this season.
“They’re really good, strong, athletic kids,” Curtis said. “They’re three-season sport athletes, and you can tell it just carries over to everything they do. They work hard, they practice hard, they’re great teammates. They’re just all-around awesome kids.”
Dirigo goalie Keira Reny (two saves) made a kick save late in the third quarter keep the Huskies scoreless.
“First-time goalie, junior, never played field hockey, never been in pads before,” Curtis said. “She’s doing a great job this season.”
The shutout bid ended early in the fourth quarter when MCI’s Celia Stinson received the insert off a corner and her shot was redirected by teammate Vivian Walker into the goal to cut the deficit to 3-1.
“Yeah, she’s a good inserter,” Wilkinson said of Walker. “We have some strong girls on the corner, and when they play on their toes and not their heels, it’s a different game.”
Midway through the fourth quarter, the Huskies tried a backdoor play off a corner, but the redirect attempt went out of bounds.
Waite scored her second goal from about 8 feet out after receiving a pass from Grace Averill.
“I was honestly, like, surprised because I didn’t know like where it went, and then I saw it like hit the top of the goal,” Waite said.
Dirigo, as a member of the Mountain Valley Conference, mostly plays against Class C South squads during the regular season and doesn’t see much of its fellow C North teams. So whoever the Cougars face in the semifinals will be an unfamiliar foe — and, if second-seeded Foxcroft wins, they’ll have to make a long journey.
“We’re at a disadvantage for sure,” Curtis said. “We go in and we’re on turf (at Foxcroft). We’re a grass team, obviously, and that sucks having to figure that out on top of everything else. We go in definitely at a disadvantage.”
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