Panthers scrape past Blazers

OCT. 19, BLAZER FIELD—

Win or lose, Senior Night is always a night to remember. But for Blair's field hockey team, the last regular season game of the year — and the last home game for the Blazers' seniors — was marked by the continuation of frustrating yearlong trends. Blair (4-8) failed to match Paint Branch's lone goal, and fell to the Panthers, 1-0.

Blair spent most of the game trying to play catch-up following Paint Branch's only goal 11 minutes into the game. Off a corner from the left side of the field, Paint Branch sent the ball into the right side of Blair's circle. The ball careened back and forth between the sticks of Blair defenders and Paint Branch forwards until it met the head of a Panther stick and skirted past the pads of Blair's senior goalie, Maura Druhan.

Throughout the rest of the half, Blair and Paint Branch continued their offensive stalemate, matching move for move on both sides of the field. As she did throughout the game, Blair coach Brook Franceschini experimented with different lineups in the midfield and attack searching for the right combination that might yield an offensive outburst. However, the offense failed to come to life in the first half, and the Blazers left the field down by one.

Early in the second half, with juniors Helen Anderson and Claire Onley continuing to disrupt the Paint Branch attack, Franceschini's substitutions appeared to have given Blair a bona fide scoring opportunity.

After a Blair shot forced the Paint Branch goalie to cover the ball with her legs, the referees stopped play and called a stroke, giving the Blazers a penalty shot. Sophomore Julia Stratton stepped up to the spot, but her shot was stopped before it reached the back of the goal by the Panther goalie. The penalty shot was the closest the Blazers came to knotting the game up, as later forays into the box proved unsuccessful.

Druhan is aware of the next step Blair must take as it prepares for the playoffs, but her concern has existed for much of the season. "We need to learn how to score," said Druhan. "We can do extremely well here if we put a couple goals in."

Franceschini was sad to see her seniors bow out on a disappointing note in their last home game. "All of the seniors played excellent today, there was just that one ball that snuck in," she said.

Despite the loss, seniors enjoyed the fanfare that came with what was most likely their final game on Blazer Field. Before the game, all of the seniors — Claire Harper, Jessie Hallberlin, Andrea Wilkinson, Christine Kim, and Druhan — walked out to midfield amid applause from the fans with a friend or family member by their side.