Belfast tips ‘Jammers in overtime

BELFAST – Just when Allen Holmes figured his Belfast team wasn’t listening to him, senior Darci Brown proved him wrong.

Trapped in a 1-1 tie with the 10-minute overtime ticking away, Brown came up with the soft touch to beat a diving Camden-Rockport goalie Heather Taylor on the far post for the 2-1 Belfast schoolgirl field hockey win Tuesday.

“I’ve talked to Darci Brown, over and over and over, because she likes to rocket the ball, or try to, and she never connects in practice,” Holmes said.

“They’re always wide or she misses it, and I said `Look, just be under control and hit the ball easy, it doesn’t matter how hard it goes in as long as it goes in,’ ” he said with a grin. “She did what she supposed to.”

Brown’s goal occurred with 73 seconds remaining after Belfast, now 6-1-1, pummelled Camden-Rockport’s defense with 22 shots and 19 penalty corners in nearly 70 minutes of play before a crowd of 150.

“It was like it was drawn on paper,” Brown said of her third goal of the season. “Lisa [Barrows] hit it in and Andrea [Lapierre] was right there [to cross the ball] and we were just wide open and I just pushed it in.

“I was overrunning the ball in the game and all I could hear was coach saying `Control it, just push it in, dribble it right in the goal,’ ” she said.

Despite the loss, which drops Camden-Rockport to 2-6, the Windjammers’ performance salvaged some family pride for first-year coach Janet Holmes-Jackson, Allen Holmes’ daughter.

“We really didn’t play a good game at Castine [a 5-0 loss],” Holmes-Jackson said.

The Windjammers took the 1-0 lead with 7:26 remaining in the first half when Jill Sady sent a pass from the top of the circle to an unmarked Joanna Stone who beat Belfast keeper Renee Box to the left.

“Our goal today was to score on them,” Holmes-Jackson said. “I said, `You know what, the outcome doesn’t really matter as long as we get a goal,’ and we got it first, and that was great.”

Belfast tied it at less than four minutes later when Lapierre pushed a Taylor rebound from Barrows’ initial shot and it bounced off the heel of a Windjammer defender for the 1-1 tie.

The Lions blasted their way through the second half but couldn’t convert on 12 penalty corner attempts or 13 shots as Taylor finished with 16 saves on 23 shots. She received strong support on the corners from sweeper April Mitchell and left back Margot Buescher.

“Well, you know, you’ve got to have something to practice,” Holmes said. “You just can’t keep going every night without something to practice.

“But we had some good execution, we missed a few times,” he said. “It’s hard when you have that stick stop. When it works, it’s there, but the ground’s bumpy in that middle because of football and soccer and everyone plays in the middle.”

C-R’s Box made two saves on four shots.

JV: Belfast 1, Camden-Rockport 1