The Morse and Brunswick field hockey teams opened up the 2020 season Saturday in Brunswick. Eli Canfield/The Times Record

 

BRUNSWICK— The Brunswick and Morse field hockey teams opened up the season Saturday, and it couldn’t have come any sooner for the squads.

“We were thrilled to be out there today,” said Brunswick coach Carrie Sullivan. “That was the best to get back to playing games.”

“It was fantastic seeing the girls playing for the first time,” added Morse coach Kerri Reno.

Brunswick won, 6-4, behind three goals from Kelsey Sullivan. The Dragons struck first when Emma Lind converted a pass from Lauren Jacobs to put Brunswick up 1-0, just 51 seconds into the game.

Brunswick maintained pressure throughout the quarter, with Morse goalie Gracie Hawks making a couple of big saves to keep the deficit at one. Hawks finished with seven saves.

Kelsey Sullivan then scored two goals within two minutes to push the Dragons lead to three.

After a couple of penalty corners for Morse, and some big saves by Brunswick goalie Hanna Wentworth, the score remained at 3-0 at halftime.

Sullivan again found the back of the cage early in the second half.

“It felt good to finally have a game,” Sullivan said. “That was pretty good” to score. We had everyone chipping in and had a lot of goals from everyone.”

Morse got on the board just over five minutes into the third quarter, when Isabel Sterlneck buried a rebound after a Brunswick goalie Ahavah Burch — who had subbed in for Wentworth  — made the initial save.

Just over a minute later, Morse forward Kennedy St. Pierre cut the lead down to two, wristing a shot into the bottom corner of the cage just past the outstretched arms of Burch.

Brunswick scored again toward the end of the third, when Sara Coughlin found the back of the cage. Coughlin added her second goal of the game in the fourth quarter, with Abbie Belanger setting her up with 13:16 remaining.

The Shipbuilders did not go quietly however and kept the ball in the Dragons end of the field for most of the quarter.

“We started having fun in the second half,” Reno said. “We started to gel together.”

“It was great to see our team get an early jump and an early cushion,” Sullivan added.