Two North Shore teams battled for bronze at the senior girls provincial AAA field hockey championships last week with the Handsworth Royals topping the Carson Graham Eagles to claim the consolation prize.
The two North Vancouver schools very nearly took their neighbourhood rivalry all the way to the gold medal match, but each lost in heartbreaking shootouts in the semifinals.
Handsworth faced an old foe in the semifinals, taking on Cowichan in a rematch of last year’s championship game. The result was the same this time around, as the Vancouver Island squad rode the stellar play of junior national team goalkeeper Robin Fleming to a 3-2 shootout win.
“They have the best goalie in the province, so we knew we needed to score, score, score,” said Handsworth head coach Graham Walker. “They scored on us first, we scored early in the second half to tie it up. There was a bit of a lapse in our play for literally 10 seconds and they scored quite an easy goal, unfortunately, and then we battled back for the rest of the game but we had to play from behind.”
Handsworth tied the game 2-2 with literally no time left on the clock, but the excitement was short-lived as the Royals couldn’t solve Fleming in the shootout.
“That was probably as even a game as I’ve ever seen – it could have gone either way,” said Walker. “We knew that we needed to win it in regulation time. … We were pouring it on – we managed to tie it up, and if we hadn’t given up that one sort of easier goal, then I think we would have had it.”
Cowichan went on to claim their second straight title. Carson Graham, meanwhile, put together a strong run at the tournament that included a 2-1 quarterfinal win over Shawnigan Lake’s Frances Kelsey secondary.
“Their team just got better and better and better throughout the season,” Walker said about the Eagles. Carson’s run for gold ended with a 2-1 shootout loss against Kelowna, sending them to the bronze match against the Royals.
“Those semifinals could have gone any way … it would have been absolutely fantastic to have a North Shore final at provincials,” said Walker, adding that both teams were shattered by their semifinal shootout losses. “Both teams were upset with that, of course, because they were hard-fought games, and then had to get back up to play in the bronze medal game.”
In the bronze match Handsworth took the lead in the first half before Carson equalized in the second. With a shootout looming, Handsworth ended it in regulation time with a penalty corner goal with one minute left in the game.
“It was a really good game,” said Walker. “It was a good, close, hard-fought match. Two very different styles. We just eked it out at the very end.”
Tournament all-star awards went to Handsworth’s Audrey Sawers and Carson Graham’s Imogen Delmotte.
