Cummings’ goal lifts Belfast to win

BELFAST – The celebration was muted, but it wasn’t because the No. 1 Belfast field hockey team was expecting to beat No. 5 John Bapst of Bangor in Saturday’s Eastern Maine Class B semifinal.

“We’re not going to get too excited,” Belfast coach Allen Holmes said. “We’re going to enjoy this but we have a little bit more work to do.”

Thanks to Britt Cummings’ second-half goal in a 1-0 win over the Crusaders, the Lions will go back to work with practice Monday to get ready for their first Eastern Maine final appearance since 2000.

Belfast, now 16-0, faces No. 2 Rockland Wednesday at 3 p.m. The Tigers edged No. 3 Waterville 2-1 Saturday.

Belfast beat Rockland 1-0 in an Oct. 7 game. It was the only meeting this year of the two Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference rivals.

John Bapst finishes its season at 12-3-1.

Although the Crusaders took just three shots and had few excellent scoring chances, they kept up the pressure all game and held possession for long stretches.

“We did a great job pressuring the ball,” Bapst coach Gina Schuck said. “My left side of the field did a great job stepping up and keeping them from being able to run down their right strong side, especially the first half of the game.”

With Bapst’s defense and midfield controlling play at times, especially in the second half, Holmes called a timeout with 7:46 left in the game to get the offense going.

During the timeout he talked about trying to get a penalty corner to set up a scoring opportunity.

That corner chance didn’t come. But 27 seconds after the timeout, the Lions moved the ball down the field and Skye Ellis found Cummings at the right side of the goal. Cummings tapped it in past Bapst goalie Meredith Atkinson.

“[Holmes] was talking about how we were so excited in the circle and trying to shoot it too quick,” Cummings said of the timeout. “What happened was, we got it into the circle and calmed down, and it worked. The whole team got down the field and it was just a matter of who put it in.”

The win was the 14th shutout for the Belfast defense this year. The Lions have given up three goals in 16 games.

“[Laura Berry, Heather Read and Nicole Hubbard] are good,” defender Kelsey Jackson said. “If [the ball] gets by the midfielders they can pick it up and send it right back up.”

Atkinson made eight saves on 10 shots, including a penalty stroke. Belfast’s Liz Anderson stopped all three Bapst shots.

The Crusaders changed their lineup a bit for the late regular-season and playoff games to reinforce the defense.

“We knew we were taking away some of our offensive threat,” Schuck said. “But we knew we had to keep from getting scored on. We still had some scoring opportunities but not quite as many as we had hoped.”