One after another. Goal after goal. Westfield lines up on the circle, heads down, as they prepare for yet another faceoff— a familiar feeling.
But, with little time remaining in the third period, a miracle happened : Westfield scored their first goal of the season. It happened at a moment’s notice. One second, both teams are crowded around Westfields goal while the next, the Delaney twins are hustling to the other side of the ice. With a quick pass from Ella Delaney to Lauren Delaney next to the goal, the puck slid past the Summit goalkeeper. The stands erupted; in a post-game interview, senior captain Emerson Wotanowski called the Delaney’s the “players of the game”: “The ‘Deslayney’ twins, we like to call them them.”
Despite Lauren Delaney’s goal, the scoreboard still marked a painful 7-1 loss for Westfield against the Hilltoppers. Coming off of a 9-0 loss on Tuesday to Oak Knoll did not help the Blue Devil’s mentality going into this matchup, especially playing Summit who is placed a division above Westfield. Wotanowski said, “We always knew Summit has been a really tough competitor. So, we knew we needed to be on our toes.”
Although the outcome was not what Westfield wanted, they decided to shed light on the positive moments of their performance. Head coach Matt Gualtiere said, “We don’t really worry so much about the score in a game like this, but I thought they competed. They were much better working as teammates supporting each other. And I think that’s important. Looking at overall growth, as opposed to actual results, is more important to the process.”
To be frank, the first two periods were tough to watch for Westfield fans. Left and right, Summit was making wrist shots from far out, past multiple Westfield defenders, along with relentless breakaways to goal that Westfield’s defense was simply not prepared for. With seemingly never ending goal scoring, Westfield adjusted their gameplan to try to guard Summit’s offense. Wotanowski mentioned that her coaching staff said, “the wings needed to get on the faceoff dot because their defense was always down by the net.”
As the third period approached, and the game plan shifted, victory was far from the minds of Westfield. Instead, with a growing crowd, Wotanowski said, “because there were more people here we felt like we had something to prove.”
Westfield brought energy. Unlike the first and second periods, Westfield began to take more shots on goal, made more defensive stops, and eventually, even got a goal of their own. The 7-1 score is not reflective of Westfield’s third quarter performance, and for the final eight minutes, Westfield’s defense managed to hold Summit from scoring a single goal.
“The other thing I look at is we’re a much younger team to these other teams. I know they have 12 seniors over there. We have two playing. We have a lot of freshmen, a lot of sophomores and a couple of juniors, so it’s learning because at some point, we are going to be the team that’s going to be older playing against teams that are younger. And that’s when we look to get it back. But at the end of the day, right, you got to play,” said Gualtiere.
Reflecting on the end result of this challenging matchup, junior goalie Jolie Bruder said, “I think that if we played the way that we finished, we would have had a stronger game.”
Girls hockey will face Cranford at Warinanco Park on Friday at 6:30 p.m., coming for Cougar blood for their first win of the season.
