JAY — It was those finishing touches in front of the Lisbon net that made Spruce Mountain High School field hockey coach Katie Trask feel like her Phoenix are turning the corner this season.
Lisbon’s Elle Picard (7) and Spruce Mountain’s Hanni Johnson (39) go after the ball in in an MVC field hockey game in Jay on Wednesday afternoon. The host Phoenix captured a 3-0 win. (Tony Blasi / Sun Journal)
The Phoenix (4-4) punched in three fast-and-furious goals and gave their coach hope in the first half, rolling to a 3-0 Mountain Valley Conference victory over the Greyhounds (1-7) on a picture-perfect autumn afternoon on Wednesday.
“Gosh, finally I feel like they are playing this game, but we finally learned how to finish,” Trask said. “We had a hard, tough practice yesterday, really working inside the circle and it paid off today.
“I am really proud of them. They worked hard. They finally finished and that’s what we needed to do. We’ve been playing that way for three games, where if we just finished, it would have been a different story, I think. Super impressive today for sure.
“Lisbon is a great team. They always come ready to play. Same thing like us, not finishing. I am hoping this is a game-changer for us. We were hoping to come out of our slump.”
Avri Armandi put the Phoenix on the scoreboard at 22:04 of the first half. She used an Emily Castonguay assist and popped the ball in to hand-deliver Spruce a 1-0 lead.
A little over five minutes later, Spruce introduced its sister act — Emily and Ryleigh Castonguay — who teamed up for an afternoon performance to produce the Phoenix’s second goal at 17:09. Emily was credited with the goal and Ryleigh provided the feed to make it happen.
Less than two minutes lapsed when the Phoenix found another opening to score their third goal.
Hanni Johnson used a pass from Armandi, who was credited with the assist, and scored at 15:24 to put Spruce Mountain on top, 3-0.
“I think Ashley Campbell in the backfield (helped). She had a lot of great stops at crucial times,” Trask said. “Ella Plourde I have in the back and I can bring her up front. That made a huge difference there, too.’’
The second half featured a more determined Greyhounds, who prevented Spruce from scoring, but Lisbon failed to come up with a goal..
“I thought our effort was better today. I thought we didn’t back down,” Lisbon coach Julie Petrie said. “We definitely had opportunities. We just didn’t capitalize, which was a bummer.”
The Greyhounds return to action at home against unbeaten Winthrop at 3:30 p.m.
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