Madeline Lancione wasn’t absolutely sure how she fired the shot that catapulted Spalding field hockey back to the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference championship.
Nearly an entire half of scoreless play dogged Spalding, withered corner attempts littering the circle before Notre Dame Prep’s cage. When Lancione’s stick struck the ball for her eventual goal, it didn’t rocket off like others — like the five that would follow.
It rolled like a sticky ball on carpet. In almost three decades of coaching Spalding, coach Leslee Brady reckoned she’d never seen a shot so slow.
“I just kind of took my space,” Lancione said, grinning at her coach. “I actually thought the ref was gonna give a call. But everyone stopped around me, so I took advantage of the opportunity.”
It was as if the “Red Sea parted,” Brady joked then. In reality, it was the Blazers’ blue sea that split wide open.
That goal snowballed into a 6-0 statement victory for Spalding, which furthered its unbeaten record (17-0-1) on its path to redemption. The Cavaliers advance to face Bryn Mawr at Stevenson University at 4 p.m. Sunday for the conference championship.
“It was nothing, and then once we broke the ice, it was like ‘bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,'” Brady said. “With Madeline’s goal, you could sense it was coming.”
Lancione’s second goal, netted in the fourth quarter, could not have resembled the first less. She glided into open space, snapped her arms back and whipped her solo shot with blistering speed. Goals from Carys Donahoe and Paige Sanborn in the third quarter, and EJ Ostrowski and Lily Sheehan in the fourth, matched that intensity and seemed to fly in to score with less and less time in between.
This time last year, Spalding fell to Garrison Forest in the 2023 final. But this fall, the Cavaliers shut out eight opponents, including the Mawrtians, 3-0, on Sept. 25.
The shift between last year’s team to this year’s is an easy one. There’s a goal to achieve, Lancione said, and the Cavaliers are all “in on it together.”
“We’re ready to not have a repeat of the last few years,” Lancione said. “Everyone’s mindset is so focused. We’re locked in to the weekend.”
Admittedly, Spalding clawed through its last three games by a goal. At halftime, the Cavaliers knew they were facing the same uncomfortable possibility.
“We came with so much energy,” Lancione said. “I feel like we really just wanted to make a change.”
Brady couldn’t really spot a change in the Blazers’ defense, dotted with some of Notre Dame Prep’s best players. It was simply an energy shift for her offense that generated all those goals. But in terms of stopping the Blazers from responding with their own, the longtime coach knew her team had to minimize as many corners as possible.
Brady credited her “Stella” defense for following through (though quickly added Stella Bumgarner needed couldn’t be quite as successfully stingy without Jilly Lawn, too). The lifelong friends hunted potential Notre Dame Prep attempts without mercy, fending all but three balls away before they could touch keeper Gabby Prentice.
“And then after we got a few goals, we even dropped back our defense and midfield, man-to-man, not letting them get the ball up to that field on that end,” Brady said.
In 26 years, Brady has produced three IAAM A Conference champions. This group features all the ingredients to do it again: All-State players, All-Americans and Division I commits. Ignoring all of that is what gives them the edge.
“You can see it in all of their short, connective passes. They’re unselfish,” Brady said. “For that kind of talent to be as team-oriented as it is, they do such a good job of it. It all sort of came together. … And it would be sweet for it to come together Sunday.”
Goals: AS — Lancione 2, Donahoe 1, Ostrowski 1, Sanborn 1, Sheehan 1
Assists: AS — Calia Eckenrode 2
Saves: AS — Prentice 3
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