For the first 15 minutes of action on the turf at Bedford High School on Saturday afternoon, No. 7 Bishop Brady looked like the better team against unbeaten No. 1 Gilford. But after the first quarter, the Giants fought a mostly uphill battle and came up short, losing 2-0 in the Division III championship game.
The Giants (11-7) controlled possession and had some opportunities to put pressure on the Golden Eagles (17-0), but they just couldn’t capitalize. After that, Gilford flipped the script.
With 8:11 to play in the second quarter, Olivia Keenan’s shot found the back of the cage for the top seed to take the lead. The field continued to feel slanted in Gilford’s direction all the way through the fourth quarter when Alysen Pichette doubled the Golden Eagles’ lead with 8:24 remaining.
The Giants just could not respond.
“I think Gilford figured it out,” Bishop Brady head coach Kelly Owen said regarding what changed after the first quarter. “We definitely held possession the majority of the first quarter, and then they figured it out.”
Saturday’s game was a situation where if Gilford played to its capabilities, it was going to be almost impossible for the underdog Giants to pull off the upset. And that’s essentially what happened. Gilford’s speed and aggressiveness proved to be too much.
“They travel in packs of three,” Owen said of how Gilford defended her team. “I think that rattled us a bit.”
But either way, as much as Bishop Brady wanted to come out Saturday as D-III champions, the fact the Giants made it this far was an accomplishment in its own right.
Entering the season, Owen didn’t know who her go-to players were going to be. In the early games, she would play almost her entire roster trying to find what worked. It truly took until the very end of the season for things to click, and it couldn’t have come at a better time, with Bishop Brady rattling off upsets against No. 2 Newfound and No. 3 Newport en route to Saturday’s affair.
It was the Giants’ fourth consecutive appearance in the championship game, having won in 2019 and 2020 (by forfeit), before losing to Hopkinton last year. During that stretch, Owen’s teams have never been ranked higher than third; they’ve just found the magic at the right time.
“This was an amazing, surprising gift,” Owen said of this playoff run. “That’s what I’m going to remember.”