It wasn’t much of a hole that St. Anne’s-Belfield had to dig out of, but once it was done, the rest was simple. The Saints had to hang tough for the first ten minutes of play in the LIS semifinals against St. Catherine’s but every minute afterward they were in control including a 7-0 run that fueled a 19-6 win to set up a third meeting with Collegiate in the championship game.
“With a balanced attack, if you try and shut down one player, we have another to step it up,” said STAB coach Mary Blake. “It makes all the difference in the world. I felt like I started holding possession instead of forcing things. When you’re down you feel like you have to get that goal right away, but we held possession. And then the defense played outstanding. They played on their speed. That was really big for us.”
Down 3-1, the Saints had to rely on their defense to turn things in their favor, and goalkeeper Catherine Towers provided an early trio of saves to sway things in their favor. STAB was able tie things at 4-4 and keep it back and forth at 5-5. But from there in the middle of the first half through the first minutes of the second, the Saints rattled off seven straight goals, almost entirely by running its set offense and playing patiently.
“We just kind of decided that this was our time,” said STAB’s Annie Cory. ‘We’ve been gunning for the championship all year and we said it was time to give it all we’ve got. We took that to heart and went hard after that.”
Up 12-5, the Saints defense gave up few chances as they forced turnovers and applied heavy pressure to each St. Catherine’s player trying to advance the ball. The closest the visitors could get was at 13-6 as STAB continued to own the time of possession battle and create opportunities through its depth and passing.
“They’re a quick time so we chose to slow it down and work it to our game,” Cory said. “We tried to open things up off of cuts and not try and force it and wind up turning the ball over.”
Four different players had at least five points in the win for St. Anne’s. Julia Haney had five goals and two assists. Alex Tennery and Caroline DiGiacomo both had hat tricks to go with a pair of assists. Cory finished wih two goals and three assists. Virginia Speidel added two goals and a helper. Lila Satterfield gave the Saints six players with multi-point games with her two goals. Towers had nine saves in net.
STAB travels to Collegiate today at 6 p.m. for the LIS championship.
