Garden City field hockey's season ends with loss in state Class B semifinal
LAGRANGEVILLE, N.Y. — The Garden City field hockey team faced its toughest competition of the season Saturday.
The Trojans were held scoreless as Garden City fell to Section II’s Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake, 3-0, in the state Class B semifinal game at Arlington High School in Lagrangeville.
“The upstate teams always come out strong and they gave such good field hockey players,” said 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) was awarded 24 penalty corners throughout the match, with all three goals falling on corners. The Spartans put up an early 1-0 lead with 1:00 left in the first quarter when Lilliana Morse fired a pass to Grace Kogut in front of the net.
“I was really proud of the defensive corner units. When we started, we switched the players around a lot and found out what works. We’ve improved throughout the season, and it showed today,” Mitchell said. “We had a ton of defensive corners, and they did a great job at shutting down a good amount of them.”
Mitchell made three consecutive saves for Garden City (13-3) to stop 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 and she really pulled through in the most competitive game we’ve had this entire season,” coach Lauren Lavelle said. “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 for a 2-0 lead. 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 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.”
