The saying “neither team deserved to lose” has become clichéd, but in the case of the Whitehall vs Northampton field hockey game last Thursday, it was apropos.

The K-Kids scored the go-ahead goal with 4:36 left in the game and survived penalty stroke with 56 seconds left to claim a 2-1 win and the Cement Belt Trophy point.

Northampton drew first blood when they earned a corner just before the horn at the end of the first period. Brooke Peters knocked home Alivia Bankos’ pass with the clock at zeros to put the K-Kids up 1-0.

While Northampton had the better of the play in the first quarter, the Zephyrs took control of the second, earning 7 corners in the period to the Kids’ 2. The fifth of those corners was the one the paid dividends as Ally Cook scooped up a rebound off an Emma Bonshak drive and put it in the cage at 3:52 to even the score.

The third quarter was fairly even, but a big save by Whitehall’s Lilly Trocki on a breakaway at 6:05 was the key to sending the game to the final stanza all square.

After combining for 18 corners in the previous 2 periods, the war of attrition limited each team to just a single corner in the fourth quarter. Northampton cashed in on theirs as Taylor Kranzley fed Eliza Rogerson for a blast that found an opening on the left side of the cage.

With the clock running down under a minute, K-Kids’ goalie Kadee Schrader came aggressively out of her goal to try to clear the ball, stumbled and knocked down a Whitehall attacker giving the Zephyrs a penalty stroke. Schrader responded by making the save and clinched the win.

Whitehall head coach Jenn Bodnar provided her thoughts.

“It was a great game,” she said. “Hats off to Northampton. It was a well-contested game. I’d like to play them 18 times a season. I think it would be pretty fun. Both teams played hard and had opportunities. They capitalized and we didn’t.”

The loss was especially hard for the Zephyrs to take because it knocked them out of the EPC tournament. They would have been in as the sixth seed with a win.

Bodnar elaborated.

“If we had played 18 games like we played tonight, we would not by 9-9 today,” she said. “These are the kinds of games, win or lose, that I love coaching – for seeing the effort and seeing them work together. Playing with this kind of intensity and this kind of heart and togetherness and everyone cheering. We knew what this meant and we just came up short.”