Talia Schenck became the first player in the history of New Jersey field hockey to score 100 goals in a season when she scored three times Tuesday night to lead 4-seed Lawrence to a 4-1 win over top seeded Lawrenceville in the semifinals of the Mercer County Tournament.
The Cards used some tenacious defense, some incredible goaltending and, as usual, some outlandish offensive feats by Schenck to break the Big Red’s four year reign as MCT champions and advance to the tournament final on Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Lawrence High. It was the first loss in the MCT for Lawrenceville since it was defeated by Allentown in a 2015 semifinal game.
Lawrence will square off against 3-seed Princeton Day, which won its semifinal game against previously unbeaten 2-seed Princeton 2-0. The meeting will be a rematch of a regular season game between the two teams, won by PDS 4-3.
Lawrence took it to Lawrenceville early, moving into the Big Red’s end of the field and staying there for the first five minutes of action. Schenck attacked the Lawrenceville goal through the early going but could not score. She was stopped once by a kick save off the pads of goalie Judith van Dusen and then, when she had worked her way through the defense and moved the ball to an open space in front of the goal, Lexi Koch raced in from the opposite side of the goal and cleared the ball before Schenck could get off a shot.
After that, the game was largely a battle for possession as control switched from one team to another. But the early success Lawrence had was a key factor in how the Cards were able to battle toe to toe the rest of the way.
“All the offense from both teams came in bursts,” Schenck said. “I think having that first five minutes gave us the confidence throughout the rest of the game. We kept saying to each other, even when it was 0-0 and they scored first, ‘This is the best hockey we’ve played all season so there’s nothing to be worried about. The goal will come.’ We felt confident the whole game.”
The goal did, in fact, come and when it did, it was no surprise that it came off the stick of Schenck. Lawrenceville had jumped out to a 1-0 lead just three minutes into the second half when Kiera Duffy took a pass from Anna Gill and slipped it into the Lawrence goal.
But Lawrence came right back, with Schenck as the tip of the spear, as she slipped past the Big Red defense and pounded home a goal to tie the game less than two minutes later.
“So they get super pissed off when we fall behind,” Lawrence coach Megan Errico said of her players. “So I knew getting the ball to start after that goal, Talia was going to take it up. We’ve worked on pushing all of our players up on the 50 for when we start with the ball, so I knew it was going to happen.”
Schenck got another chance at the Lawrenceville goal just before the half as she flew up the left side, went to the baseline and drilled a shot at the corner of the goal. It was blocked by van Dusen and as two other Lawrence players tried to get their sticks on the ball, the Lawrenceville goalie was called for collapsing on the ball and Lawrence was awarded a penalty stroke. Schenck drove it home and gave Lawrence its first lead, 2-1, with 1:17 left in the third quarter.
“It’s like the greatest feeling ever,” Schenck said of being able to go one on one with the goalie on a penalty stroke. “I was jumping up and down before I even took the shot. It’s something I practice a lot so I don’t really get nervous when I do that. So I was just ready to set up. It was an innocent mistake from the goalie, but it was lucky for us.”
Lawrenceville fought back, descending on the Lawrence goal in waves but the Cards clamped down on defense. And when that wasn’t enough, goalie Abbie Duncan picked up the slack. She had 17 saves in the game and made a series of remarkable kick saves, body saves and stick saves.
“She blew up last year,” Errico said of her goalie. “This was the game of her life. And my defender Miduna (Rishindran), in the back, it was the game of her life. My defense worked hard.”
Lawrence turned up the offensive pressure in the final quarter, and while the Big Red was able to fight off the Cards, including a run of three straight corners with 10:46 to play, eventually the dam would break.
That’s exactly what happened when Schenck chipped in a rebound with 8:49 left that gave Lawrence a 3-1 edge. It was also a matter of Schenck moving into uncharted territory as her third goal of the game made her the only player in the history of the state to score 100 goals in the season.
“When it’s a 2-1 game it’s very easy to come back,” Schenck said of the milestone goal. “So I just really wanted to keep building on it. It didn’t even register in my head that it was 100 until two minutes afterwards and I was thinking, ‘Three...’ I had to add it in my head. It’s a lot of nerves with that whole race with Ryleigh (Heck of Eastern, who has 88 goals on the season) so it feels really good and it’s super exciting.”
The Cards locked it up with three minutes to play when freshman Carolin Rotteveel scored off an assist from Schenck to set the final score at 4-1.
“We pulled Caroline up from defense and put her on offense because she works pads really well,” Errico said. “And she worked pads well on that fourth goal.
“We came in with a game play,” Errico added of her team’s play. “And my gi9rls executed that game plan. I can’t be more proud. We watched film, we scouted, we were ready for this. That’s all we’ve been doing.”
While the loss was disappointing, Lawrenceville coach Lisa Ewanchyna was happy with the play of her team.
“I felt good,” she said of her team’s performance. “Actually I thought there were a lot of things we did well. We just weren’t capitalizing on pour opportunities in the offensive end. I think the ball was a little bouncy for us at times and that was alittle frustrating. When you come down to it, it’s how many balls hit the backboard.
“To tell you the truth, I think (Lawrence) had an overall solid team and they played a really good game. They just put it all together. We couldn’t finish.”
In the second game of the MCT semifinal doubleheader, Princeton Day scored an upset when it tagged Princeton with its first loss of the season 2-0.
The Panthers fired a shot across the bow when they scored off a corner at 6:32 of the first quarter to take a 1-0 lead against a Princeton team that had allowed zero goals in 12 of its previous 13 wins. It was Jadyn Huff and her big stick that paved the way to the score as she fired away from the edge of the circle and the team’s leading scorer, Ally Antonacci, got her stick on the ball and guided it into the corner of the cage.
“It was an amazing feeling,” Antonacci said of the goal. “We just wanted to come out and score pretty early jusat so we could get numbers on the board. It was pretty impressive, getting one of our first corners in.
“Jadyn hit a beautiful ball. She hit it right outside of the post. I try to deflect it in every time. It works pretty well for us. Hockey skills, really helped me out.”
With goals tough to come by against Princeton’s stingy defense, Princeton Day’s own defensive unit went to work and fashioned a shutout of its own, blanking the Little Tiger offense and its high scoring forward Olivia Weir the rest of the way. The PDS offense then later crushed any hopes Princeton had of coming back, when Tessa Caputo scored unassisted with 7:42 remaining in the game to put the Panthers up 2-0.
“We had a game plan,” Princeton Day coach Heather Farlow said of the win. “We said that we needed relentless effort for the full 60 minutes. We felt that we had the stronger team overall and that we play a good, team game. And we were the underdog coming in, so we had nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
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