Capping off Wednesday evening in the LILJ HSWL playoffs, Sacred Heart and Westhampton entertained fans to a thrilling game that saw the 12th seeded Spartans defeat the 5th seeded Hurricanes by a score of 12-11 to head to the quarter finals for a rematch from week 1 against Ward Melville.
In the first half it was Westhampton that scored the first two goals to take a 2-0 lead, before Sacred Heart answered back with four consecutive goals to take a 4-2 advantage. The Spartans built a lead of as large as four goals, leading 8-4 in the closing seconds of the first half before Westhampton’s Aine Byrne beat the first half buzzer on an assist by Reese King to cut the Hurricanes deficit to three.
As Sacred Heart aimed to fend off Westhampton and preserve the lead in the second half, the Hurricanes kept battling back, and ultimately rallied from a four goal deficit to tie the game at 10. After looking to take the lead for the first time since early in the first half, Olivia Manago came up with a pivitol save to keep the game tied, and the Spartans managed to reclaim the lead on a goal scored by Cady Flaherty. Adding an insurance goal for the Spartans was Colleen Thieke to increase their lead to 12-10, and Westhampton managed to make it a 12-11 game and were hoping to force overtime, but Sacred Heart’s freshman Allie Reasoner came up with a game-altering trail check to give possession back to the Spartans where they were able to run out the clock and prevail.
Delivering big games for the Spartans were a multitude of players, between four goals each from UVA commit Cady Flaherty and Virginia Tech commit Colleen Thieke. Kaylee Fravert the USC commit contributed with two goals, and Allie Reasoner impacted the game across the board with one goal, one assist, one ground ball, and one monumental caused turnover. Cady Flaherty scooped a game high four ground balls, and Meredith Weigand also added two ground balls. Defensively, Boston College bound Kaitlyn Cole played a pivitol role in the Spartans ability to successfully clear the ball at a high rate.
Westhampton saw another standout game from UNC commit Reese King who struck for four goals, two assists, and was 4/6 on draw controls. The dynamic sophomore Ava Derby found the back of the net four times, while Shannon Killoran led all players with three assists. Adding two points each were Hofstra commit Meaghan Tufano and Wagner bound Peyton Worby. Queens commit Katie Lanning recorded two ground balls, and in the net in the second half was Penn commit Maya Farnan who had a spectacular game with six saves and a 60% save percentage.
Sacred Heart advances to the quarterfinals to face Ward Melville on January 11th at 10:15pm, while Westhampton will be in the consolation bracket for a matchup on January 7th against Commack at 4:00pm.
