Garden City field hockey's season ends with loss in state Class B semifinal
Garden City players guard the goal in the New York State Public High School Athletic Association Class B field hockey state semifinals in Lagrangeville, NY on November 16, 2024. Credit: Allyse Pulliam
LAGRANGEVILLE — The Garden City field hockey team faced its toughest competition of the season on Saturday.
The Trojans were held scoreless as they fell to Section II’s Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, 3-0, in the state Class B semifinals at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville.
“The upstate teams always come out strong and they have such good field hockey players,” said Garden City senior goalkeeper Madeline Mitchell, who made 18 saves. “I think we prepared a lot and stayed composed. I think the score could’ve been a lot higher.”
Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake (20-0), which earned 24 penalty corners, scored on three of them. The Spartans opened the scoring with 1:00 left in the first quarter when Lilliana Morse fired a pass to Grace Kogut in front of goal.
“I was really proud of the defensive corner units," Mitchell said. "When we started, we switched the players around a lot and found out what works. We’ve improved throughout the season. We had a ton of defensive corners and our defense did a great job at shutting down a good amount of them.”
Mitchell made three consecutive saves for Garden City (13-3) to prevent Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake from adding another score in the second quarter.
“She has this composed confidence that we have always relied on and relied on even more today," Garden City coach Lauren Lavelle said. "She really pulled through in the most competitive game we’ve had this entire season. It would’ve been a completely different outcome if it wasn’t for her.”
Addisyn Knapik scored on the Spartans’ fourth corner of the third quarter to take a 2-0 lead and Maggie Lansley added another goal on a corner with 6:52 left to play.
“Having to face that many corners is defeating mentally, but they were still talking on corner number 22,” Lavelle said. “We’ve been saying all season that communications, connection and composure is going to help us win games and while we didn’t come up with a win, I think that helped us stay on top of them for a majority of the game.”
Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake also ended Garden City’s chance at a state title in the Class B championship in 2021, defeating the Trojans 2-1.
“They are top notch. Not just athletic and fast, but highly skilled, and we knew that coming in,” Lavelle said. “We played chess and moved as many players around as we could to have a better matchup against them but at the end of the day, they had so many corners and capitalized on that.”
