The rainy weather held out, so Deerfield could take the field against formidable Suffield Academy. The first half saw Deerfield strike early. The action was mostly in our offensive end early in the game with Grace Mazur ’20, Olivia Geraci ‘19, Janice Chen ‘20 and Renee Ballou ‘20 creating numerous scoring opportunities. It was Jada Howard ’19 who blasted one by the goalkeeper unassisted to put The Big Green on the board early. Suffield picked up their intensity, but defenders Cameron Heard ‘19, Saadhya Bahudodda ‘20 and Acey Cai ’20 kept them from scoring. The Big Green went into the half with the score 1-0.
The second half saw Suffield continue to put pressure on our defense by earning 4 penalty corners. Despite this pressure, Deerfield prevented Suffield from getting a shot on goal. The play continued with action in the midfield and some scoring opportunities for Deerfield created by Ally Kell ’20, Janice Chen ’20 and Helen Niles ‘19. With 3:20 left in the game, Grace Mazur ’20 scored her first goal of the season unassisted by connecting on a cross ball at the left post to make the final score 2-0.
The game was particularly challenging because we played down one player in the first half to accommodate Suffield’s low numbers, and then when a Suffield player needed to sit out the 2nd half, our girls agreed to play the rest of the game with only 8 field players instead of 10. It was a lot more running and took some reconfiguring of our positioning and strategy, but the Big Green adjusted well and dug deep to hold onto the win against a tenacious Suffield. Next up, is a rematch against Amherst on Monday.