On a beautiful fall afternoon on the Friday of Family Weekend, the Deerfield Reserve field hockey team played a rematch against cross-town rival Frontier. Once again, it was an action-packed game with exciting plays at each end of the field. Deerfield showed that it has grown into a team that understands the importance of switching fields and swinging the ball to the other side when the play gets crowded. They did this successfully a few times to create some wonderful offensive opportunities. Deerfield scored early with Maddie Boger ’21 scoring off a cross ball from Lauren Stenger ’22. After that goal, Frontier turned up their pressure and moved the ball downfield. Play went back and forth with some strong play in the midfield by Elsa Marrian ’21, Bri Felice ’21 and Lauren Stenger ’22. At 13:10, Kailen Coelho ’20 scored off a pass from Kate Stenger ’22 to put DA up 2-0. The scored remained 2-0 going into the half.
The second half saw more intense action with Deerfield having numerous scoring opportunities. Solid play from Willow Woodward ’22, Camille Glatt ’21, Kaitlyn Kelly ’22, Fourth Sukprawit ’19 and Sophia Hamlen ’22 created numerous scoring opportunities, but Frontier goal keeper Madelene Powers came up with key saves time and time again to keep Deerfield scoreless. Kendal Duff ’21 along with Aim Poonsornsiri ’21 and Athena Zarmakoupis all created some key passing combinations up field near the goal circle to help generate offensive momentum. At 12:00 left in the half after three shots were saved by Powers, Willow Woodward ’22, on a pass from Kaitlyn Kelly ’22, finally put one in the back of the net to put Deerfield up 3-0.
Key defense by Lily Zeng ’21, Kailen Coelho ’19, Jing He ’21, Maddie Boger ’21 and Lisa (’21) and Sara Ito-Bagshaw (’22) helped stop Frontier’s many scoring opportunities in the second half. Gabriela Hu ’21 recorded the shutout for Deerfield. Up next, Reserves travels to Taft on Saturday, October 20th.