Westwood Field Hockey Shutout by Dover-Sherborn

The Westwood field hockey team put together its best offensive effort of the young season in terms of aggression and shooting, but a combination of strong defense and goaltending by Dover-Sherborn kept the Wolverines from reaping their just rewards.

Westwood out-shot the Raiders 32-16, but it was D-S who managed to slip one into the cage when Mallory Stewart smacked home a rebound off of a restart late in the first half and held off the Wolverines to take a 1-0 victory Wednesday afternoon at Flahive Field.

"Our pressure was exactly what we wanted it to be," said Westwood coach Angela Wilson. "We had lots of opportunities. It's just the execution. That's the missing piece, getting it up over that goalie that just had a great dive and saved the goal."

Westwood (1-2) applied relentless pressure throughout the game, keeping the play primarily in the Raiders (1-1) end. The Wolverines also enjoyed a 10-3 edge in penalty corners, thanks in great to a highly intelligent defense, led by Alanna Leahy, that simply does not give up fouls.

The Dover goal came off of a restart, and the sport's new "self start" rule came into play as the Raiders were able to catch Westwood out of position. The ball was dumped in toward the Westwood cage and rolled to goalie Delaney Russell, who booted it back out quickly. The only person standing there was Stewart, who quickly fired the rebound into the back of net for the game's only score.

"It was off a foul and the fouls were killing us today," said Leahy. "The new self start rule killed us. It's still very new to us. Everyone was still running back and they just passed it up before we could get in position."

Added Dover-Sherborn coach Dara Johnson, "Coaches just agonize over scoring because the ball just sits there and you wonder why we aren't knocking that in. Today, we had one player in the right spot at the time for the rebound. It's all about the rebounds really and Mallory Stewart was able to take it off the pads and put it in."

Raider goalie Abby Shannon played a terrific game while under constant attack from Westwood's pressure, making 16 saves. A couple of the shots she missed were steered aside by defender Liv Tupanjanin, who made an incredible diving stop on a near-perfect shot off the stick of Westwood forward Jamison O'Neill with seven minutes remaining in the game.

Westwood has a lot to hold its heads up about, however. This was a game they very easily could have won. The forwards and midfielders executed Wilson's wish of being more aggressive and taking more shots. The defense was terrific, as was Russell in the cage with 12 saves. Alex McLaughlin dropped back from her normal spot in the midfield to help Leahy on defense and also had an excellent performance.

In the end, the Wolverines want victories. This is a team that has designs on making the postseason after coming agonizingly close in recent years, and putting together this type of effort against a tournament team from last year will give them plenty of reasons to continue chasing that dream.

"We definitely should have won based on the shots," Leahy said. "We had so many more shots than they did and it was really frustrating."

"We definitely want to make the tournament," she continued. "Every year we seem to miss it by two points and we play in a tough league where every game matters. We need everything we can get. I'm proud of the way we played but it wasn't the turnout we wanted."