Lebanon
Whaaat?
Mascoma High field hockey coach Jenn Hammond and her Lebanon counterpart, Amanda Valliere, are such longtime friends that a little thing like a rivalry won’t affect them. Of course they were going to embrace moments after Hammond’s Royals knocked Valliere’s Raiders from the ranks of the undefeated with a 3-1 win at Lebanon High on Monday.
Hammond once assisted Valliere at Mascoma and ascended to the top spot five years ago when Valliere took an out-of-the-Upper Valley teaching job. Monday marked the first on-field, regular-season encounter between the two, and it bore that much more significance given the Raiders (5-1-0) and Royals (6-1-0) now compete together in NHIAA Division III.
Mascoma allowed the game’s first goal inside of four minutes, answered it in the next two and spent the rest of the afternoon dictating the pace and position of play. Mackenzie Labrie scored twice to power the visitors, who owned a 20-1 advantage in shot attempts and might have dented the Lebanon net a few more times had it not been for the play of Hope Brown, the Raiders’ senior goalkeeper.
“Our offense has actually been really powerful,” said Mascoma senior forward Katie Pushee, who broke the 1-1 tie with a spinaround finish just shy of the second half’s mid-point. “We’ve worked really hard on offense. We have a whole new front line besides me, so I feel like we’re together, we’ve figured out a plan, now we’ve got it and the defense has backed us up.”
After a 4-9-1 campaign in her Lebanon debut last fall, Valliere and her Raiders dropped to D-III from D-II for 2018, a combination of declining enrollment and adjustments to the NHIAA’s field hockey population parameters. Mascoma still has about 200 fewer students than the district next door, but for the first time it can call Lebanon a divisional peer.
The notion jazzed the Royals, whom Hammond admitted needed a little calming down before their high-speed skills came to the fore.
“We always try to tell them, ‘Play like it’s 0-0; play with that same level of the intensity the whole, entire 60 minutes of the game,’ ” Hammond said. “ ‘Don’t put your head down. It’s OK; you just have to work through it.’ They definitely did today.”
The teams split early penalty corners before Lebanon’s second led to the game’s first goal, Sydney Gonyea redirecting Jennifer Lopez’s right-wing cross through Mascoma goalie Abby Duhaime at 3:56. Labrie had the equalizer a second past two minutes later, deflecting a Natalie Poitras cross at 5:57 on a play started by an excellent through ball down the left flank from defender Bella Kondi.
Brown made seven of her 10 saves after halftime as the Royals upped the pressure. Pushee broke the deadlock at 43:47, chasing down a loose ball to Brown’s right and pirouetting to fire a six-yard blast past the netminder’s right leg. Labrie clinched the win with 1:26 left out of a scramble, with an assist from Morgan Prentiss.
“Their two senior captains are younger sisters of girls that I coached there, so it’s really cool to see them now all grown up and playing field hockey,” Valliere said. “Jenn is one of my really good friends. I’m super happy for them. They have a great team. They played really well.
“Did I want to beat them? Of course I did. But they earned that win.”
The teams’ joint excellence and their divisional status offer to add spice to what has often been a wishful experience in the past. Lebanon and Mascoma athletes run into each other at the Carter Community Building Association, play together when they can, know each other well. But past competitive interactions have only involved preseason scrimmages or holiday tournaments, nothing on which to really build a rivalry. Rarely, if ever, have Raiders and Royals coexisted in the same high school league.
Hammond and Valliere aren’t going to let anything get out of hand. But neither are they — nor their girls — going to let up on their neighbor when they collide in the future. Given how well both are playing, the potential is there for a rematch in the postseason.
“That close sort-of town rivalry comes into play,” Valliere said. “We learned a lot from this game. I’m really excited to face Mascoma again come playoff time. Hopefully our competition has increased our level of awareness, and it’s another really, really good game.”
Stick Checks: The Raiders played the game in pink Play for a Cure shirts and socks as part of a breast cancer awareness initiative. … Valliere and Hammond are both graduates of the schools for which they now coach. … Pushee’s older sister, Brooke, who played field hockey for Valliere at Mascoma, handled the Royals’ scorebook. Valliere facetiously introduced the ex-Royal to her own scorekeeper with, “This is Brooke. She’s from the other team, but I like her.” … Lebanon’s loss leaves Newfound (6-0-0) and Bishop Brady (4-0-0) as D-III’s only undefeated teams. Mascoma will host Newfound — to whom it lost in last year’s D-III state final — on Saturday after entertaining White Mountains on Wednesday. The Raiders are off until a Saturday trip to Kearsage.
Greg Fennell can be reached at gfennell@vnews.com or 603-727-3226.