The stage was set for a Pennsylvania high school field hockey showdown between The Hill School and Villa Maria Academy on Saturday.
Up until the matchup, both teams remained undefeated. MAX Field Hockey’s latest national ranking has The Hill School at No. 1 and Villa Maria Academy at No. 2.
Only one team walked away from the pitch with a perfect record: The Hill School.
“I think we were just trying to keep the energy up,” Ella Kaplan said, who scored a hat trick in the 5-0 shutout. “Focusing on playing for each other, with each other. ‘Cause, I think that’s the motto we always maintain throughout every game, no matter the score…we really just try to work off of each other, play with each other throughout the entire game.”
The Hill School scored in the first, second, and third quarters. Villa was able to stop Hill from scoring a goal in the fourth. They tried to chip away at the score for all 60 minutes.
They weren’t without opportunities. The first quarter, Villa fought to find through balls, but weren’t able to separate from Hill’s organized middle. The Hill School’s lines worked flat and throughs quickly in pairs, or by smashing the ball to an outlet utilizing the middle of the field to only transfer the ball.
The fastest of forwards on Villa were matched with numbers when they tried to use speed to get to their attack 25.
From the first whistle, Hill controlled the game. The first goal was scored on the second of back-to-back corners. The first corner, they got a slight read on the goalie’s positioning and the second, Opal Sparling was able to slip it past Villa’s goalie Catie Connolly.
A few minutes later, Hill scored again on a field goal hammering the ball toward the cage and having a tipper prepared to finish the shot. It was Kaplan’s first score of the game.
Their third goal came in the second and showed how Hill uses space going from entering the ball on the sideline and then moving the ball – using teammates – to the cage for another goal by Kaplan.
Villa saw its first corner in the second with about 9 minutes remaining. They started to pick up pace with a more flowing back and forth battle.
The score at halftime was 3-0 Hill.
It increased to 4-0 on another corner hit from the top and was finished inside the circle by Riley Savage. And then Kaplan capped off her hat trick with a weak-side smoking tight baseline reverse that hit the opposite post about 45 seconds later.
“I would say I typically resort to reverse, which doesn’t always result in a goal or whatever,” Kaplan said. “I might want it to be. I think I got lucky in that situation. I saw the goalie coming, so I thought it would be helpful to shoot a reverse. So I think that was, like, playing the situation. Seeing what came out of it.”
The highlight for both teams was the immense pressure felt by half of each team in the fourth. Villa didn’t back down. They earned a penalty stroke with a pileup of athletes trying to put the ball in and keep the ball out.
“I mean I definitely saw my defenders, my corner crew putting their bodies, quite literally on the line,” goalie Tane King said. “So, it might have been a fair stroke but they put the effort in. So, I was ok with the call and ready to step up to take that stroke. It was a short shot, tipped through my legs. Claire Turner, who’s a current sophomore, was behind me, with a goal line save, and then Riley Savage, Claire Turner, and Sofia [Ferri], were all on the line, who saved that.”
King and the stroker, Villa’s Caitlin Connell, are friends. King’s instincts on where Connell was going to try to shoot were off, and despite that, she still stopped Connell’s shot.
“She shot high to my left glove,” King said. “I mean. I’m expecting (her) to go right, but I wait for the shot and react to what happens.”
King later added, “I think we really showed up defensively, offensively. Everyone showed up and was ready to execute.”
Aubrey Turner had two assists during the game. She said it’s a matter of being “good teammates.”
“Give everyone else the chance [to score],” she said. “I mean it’s not necessarily…great I scored, no. Like it was a great goal, someone else scored, give it to someone else. It doesn’t matter who scored in the end. The score reflects how everyone played and that’s what matters. It’s not an individual game. It’s a team game.”
The game highlight for The Hill School’s first year coach Katherine Bowie was Ferri’s defensive save.
“One team pillar is bravery,” Bowie said. “Are you willing to dive for a ball? Are you willing to dive for a tip? Defensive saves are great to see.”
Earning the trust of her athletes was at the top of her list, Bowie said. She was hired in February and has spent time bonding with her team.
“I feel like once you get to know your players, that trust is there, because yes I am new, and a lot of things I do are different from the coaches they have year round, in terms of our system,” she said. “Getting that trust allows them to lean in and it’s 50 percent me, and give them a lot of credit, 50 percent them, to lean in to what we’re doing here. And, when we do it well, it’s really special.”
Villa’s head coach Katie Evans said the game was great for her players.
“I think what we can learn is that the execution matters,” she said. “I thought Hill was excellent today and that they did a great job coming up in big moments and just finishing the play. When you play strong opponents, you don’t get many opportunities, so you’ve got to make the best of them. I think the biggest thing to takeaway is that we’re not far off from the team that we want to be. It’s just like tweaks here and there, which is exactly where we want to be.”
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Photo: Bob Benscoter
