MANCHESTER, Vt. — Jody Wood’s three-year-old to-do list just got a smidge smaller.
Wood’s Windsor High field hockey team produced back-to-back top seeds in the VPA Division III field hockey tournament the past two years, but neither netted a championship game berth. The Yellowjackets erased that oversight on Tuesday with a 5-0 win over No. 4 Missisquoi at Burr & Burton Academy’s Judy McCormick Taylor Field.
Windsor (13-2-1) dominated from the start, outshooting the Thunderbirds (8-4-4) by a 28-4 margin and earning 16 penalty corners to Missisquoi’s three. The Jacks claimed their first VPA championship game invitation since their last state crown, a 2-1 defeat of Woodstock 10 years ago. The Saturday final will pit them against the winner of Wednesday’s contest between No. 3 Lyndon and No. 2 Stowe.
“If feels great,” said Windsor junior forward Hannah Wood, who scored twice and set up a third goal. “We’ve always been strong scoring, but we’ve always been scored on, so our goal today was to not let them score on us, even when we got up.
“We didn’t want to take it into our heads that we were even up in the first half. We wanted to play strong throughout the whole game.”
Windsor’s been at the top of D-III through the regular season each of the past two years since the program returned from junior varsity-only status in 2017. The Jacks earned top seeding in both state tournaments as a result, and both ended in high-scoring, one-goal defeats one game short of the finals.
The only team doing the scoring Tuesday wore Windsor green and white. The Jacks owned a 2-0 lead by halftime, then put the game away with a three-goal burst over the span of four minutes early in the second half.
“Over the last two years, it’s like we’re finally going along and our hard work is paying off,” Windsor junior forward Alyssa Slocum said. “We’ve been working our hardest. We deserve to at least make an appearance.”
BBA’s turf field suited Windsor’s high-speed attack. It just took the Jacks a few minutes to shake off the nerves.
Hannah Wood’s first goal of the game settled Windsor down. A tic-tac-toe sequence on the Jacks’ second penalty corner of the afternoon started with a give-and-go between Slocum and Peyton Richardson before Slocum fed Wood for a one-timer from 8 yards out at 13:05.
Angelina Bigwood doubled the lead by potting her own rebound at 25:04. Missisquoi managed just one incursion into the Windsor end in the opening 30 minutes. That push ended with starting goalkeeper Madison Leduc kicking out Annie Ploof’s semi-breakaway bid.
“This year, we’ve been working on a lot of things, and today we executed a lot of them very well,” Slocum said. “Taking the ball with speed was definitely one of them. A bunch of off-ball movement really helped to hold the defense in. Simple things like that.”
As Yellowjackets sometimes do, Windsor swarmed early in the second half to put Missisquoi away.
Hannah Wood stabbed home a Bigwood pass from 12 yards at 37:14 to up the advantage to 3-0. Slocum converted a penalty stroke at 39:42 after a Missisquoi defender stepped on the ball to the left of Thunderbird goalie Kali Favreau-Weed’s net. Karen Kapuscinski finished the clinching charge at 41:10 by following up on a Wood shot and converting from point-blank range.
“Now we’re playing our game!” Jody Wood announced to her players as Missisquoi called a timeout, about the only way the T-birds were going to stop the Jacks this time around.
“I was not confident until there was 30 seconds left,” the Windsor coach confessed. “We can’t get past the semifinal game. It’s been three years. So, yeah, they’re excited.”
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Stick Checks: Glenna Ricard took care of Windsor goalkeeping chores in the second half, making two stops. … The Jacks and Thunderbirds had collided in the VPA tournament twice prior to Tuesday. Windsor took a 3-2 win in overtime in the 1996 D-II quarterfinals to equalize a 1-0 Missisquoi victory in the ’94 D-II semis. … Windsor beat Burr & Burton during the regular season, 4-1, but that contest was played on the Jacks’ MacLeay-Royce Field. … Windsor assistant athletic director Andy Tufts, who accompanied the team on Tuesday’s trip, is a 1984 BBA graduate. … D-III’s other semifinal, Lyndon meeting Stowe, takes place Wednesday afternoon at South Burlington High School. The final is set for Saturday at 3 p.m. on UVM’s Moulton Winder Field.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.