COHASSET – Throughout her decorated career at Westwood, Haley Connaughton has seen just about every situation imaginable.
So when Westwood’s five-goal lead evaporated and turned into a one goal deficit midway through the second half, the senior captain and UMass commit remained unfazed.
Connaughton then took the game over in the final six minutes by having a hand in four unanswered goals for No. 4 Westwood to propel it to a 12-9 nonleague road win over No. 3 Cohasset Wednesday night at Alumni Field.
“Haley is always directing teammates and helping them to see something that they might not be seeing,” said Westwood coach Margot Spatola. “She really took charge and took care of the ball.”
Westwood (16-4) led, 7-4, at halftime, but Cohasset (14-2) came charging out of the break.
A goal from Alexandra Finn held off the Skippers for a moment, but Molly Greer’s second tally of the half started a string of four straight goals for Cohasset.
Julia Placek followed with a goal to get within one before Jane Hansen, who finished with four goals and three assists, found the back of the net twice to give Cohasset its first lead, 9-8, with 13:13 left in the second half.
“We got jittery at points where the ball went out of bounds a couple times,” Connaughton said. “In our timeout, we just all took a collective deep breath and realized that this is our last game of the (regular) season and we don’t want to end it losing a big lead. Everyone just realized together that we wanted to win and that helped us a lot.”
Westwood settled down and notched the equalizer when Connaughton found Finn for a goal with 6:04 remaining.
A little over a minute later, Connaughton put the Wolverines ahead as she received a pass in front of the net from Courtney Cronin and buried her chance for a 10-9 lead.
Connaughton made sure that this lead stood up as she hit Courtney Lyons for a tally and added her fourth goal of the contest to go along with her two assists to seal it.
“The team really kept our composure,” Connaughton said. “That’s more than we can ask for and that has happened in a few games for us. I couldn’t have done it without them. What we started to do was realize that we needed to hold the ball, be more protective with it. I think we just wanted it more and came out stronger.”
Westwood jumped out to an early 5-1 lead as it used multiple scoring options to get ahead.
Caroline Kremer impacted the Wolverines the most in first half by scoring two goals and assisting on another while being a force on draws, which Westwood finished with a huge 16-7 advantage.
Cohasset fought back behind the play of Jane Hansen, but it was Westwood’s ability to limit her older sister Elle to one goal and one assist that made a significant difference.
“That’s smart of them,” said Cohasset coach Kully Reardon on Westwood’s game plan to negate Elle Hansen. “It not only gets her out of her rhythm, but it gets our offense out of their rhythm. We need bigger plays from our role players. It’s always hard when we don’t have sort of our quarterback in there, but we have other players that can step up and do what she does and it’s time that they do that.”
