Girls field hockey COSSA dream dies on penalties

Terrance Gavan - Sports Ed Hal Sports Pages

Red Hawks hopes dwindled to denouement last Friday after a penalty shot
loss to North Hastings in Bancroft on Friday. (Oct 29, 2010)

Courtesy of County Voice Sports - Covering the County
New season.
Next year.
The Red Hawks Varsity girls field hockey team finished second in the Kawartha finals last Tuesday.
They dropped an overtime sudden-death squeaker to St. Peters after winning their first two games of the tourney 7-0 and 1-0.
That loss placed them second in the COSSA seeding, forcing an unfavorable match up against perennial rival North Hastings in Bancroft on Friday (Oct 29).
The teams battled to a draw and then to another scoreless overtime, forcing penalties, the field hockey equivalent of the hockey shootout.

Hastings, playing at home managed to take advantage of the situation and narrowly edged out the Hawks via the dreaded penalty finale.
And it's a very depressing way to lose a sudden-death game.
Even worse when you consider the Hawks season.
Undefeated in league play.
Stingy on defense.
And abrupt, eruptive and heckling in the forward end.
They managed once again to carry play throughout the game, said head coach Caley Sisson who was enjoying a last meal with the girls at McKecks last Friday evening."
"The shootout went back and forth until they finally scored twice in a row and that was it," said Sisson, who stopped to talk to a County Voice reporter on the way home.
She said that they were all disappointed, but she gave full marks to her girls on am absolutely stellar season.
No reason to hang heads and none of the girls showed any signs of lingering regrets.
Just one of those things.
When it drps to sudden death anything can happen and on Friday the shhh part of the "It happens" rejoinder ... did.
"It was a 0-0 tie at the end of regulation, but we dominated, the ball was in their end the entire time," said Sisson. "It kinda' reminded me of Ottawa (where the Hawks lost to Hastings once again after a scoreless tie that went to penalty tries at the Robert Borden Tourney) because we had many many opportunities to score and it was kind of like a ping-pong ball going back and forth."
Unfortunately for the Hawks, it was a ping pong ball that stayed on the table just long enough to bring it to penalties.
"We played hard and we played with great intensity," said Sisson.
It's a bittersweet loss, considering the buzzsaw attack which put up 44 goals for and nil against during the regular season.
"It's tough," said Sisson. "But I'm happy and the girls did an exceptional job today and I couldn't ask for a better group of girls to be with and to coach."