Concord High’s field hockey match against Keene on Thursday held just a bit more significance than its previous bouts this season.
For a team that features nine seniors, it was their final regular-season game at Rollins Park in the crimson and white. A pre-game ceremony in which each of the girls had their moment in the limelight took place. Cardboard cutouts of their jersey numbers were staked into the ground on the boundary closest to adjacent South Street.
Balloons were scattered across the scene, and some teary-eyed family members made their way back to their lawn chairs to watch their athlete play a final time.
Fortunately for the Crimson Tide, the game was the kind of result you’d want for a senior day, as they defeated Keene, 1-0, to wrap up the regular season.
The Tide started the game with an aggressive offensive approach, forcing the Blackbirds to defend shots on goal from all angles. Multiple players, including Kayla Taylor, Emmanuelle Beaujouan, Madison Raymond and others, put Concord in solid scoring positions throughout the opening half. So much, in fact, that the Tide had four corner opportunities.
While three of those corners never materialized, the one that did wasn’t even by design.
Jordan Cromwell was tasked with putting the ball in play when the corner started with 11 minutes left in the second quarter. Cromwell, a senior, ripped a pass to Alyssa McGonigle, who fired off a one-timer from roughly 20 yards away.
The freshman’s goal chance was met by a plethora of sticks – both from Keene and Concord – but a final ricochet off senior Andie Reed’s stick in front of the goal allowed for the Tide to score the game’s lone goal.
Concord’s success rate on corners this year hasn’t been what coach Nicole Armaganian would like to see, so she revamped the approach late in the season and now is seeing the fruits of the labor pay off.
“We would have liked to score on more of them, but the fact that we scored on one that we adjusted was pretty rewarding,” Armaganian said. “It was going back to the drawing board and just figuring out why (we weren’t scoring).”
It looked as if the Tide were going to score more but, with stout play from the Keene defense to close out the half, the chances never converted.
Looking to carry its second performance into the third, Concord quickly found itself having to preserve its lead for most of the second half. Diving saves from goalie Rhyden Wheldon forced plenty of defenders and forwards alike to take over the goal in an emergency prevention.
“We all talked after the game and agreed there is no way we can continue with our defense playing more reactionary than we did,” Armaganian said. “We weren’t proactive; we’re going to break down our defense even more going into (preliminaries) just to clean it up.”
While the regular season is finished, Concord (10-5-1) looks like it will host a preliminary round on Wednesday. The predicted match is against Manchester Central, who beat the Tide, 1-0, in the season opener back in August.