ALLENTOWN, Pa. — For 56 minutes Saturday, one early goal and a busy Cedar Crest goalkeeper kept St. Mary’s College of Maryland field hockey from putting the game away. Then the Seahawks scored twice in the final three minutes, the last with two seconds on the clock, to finish a 3-0 shutout and lock up the No. 2 seed for the United East Conference tournament.
The Oct. 24 win at Cedar Crest College closed the regular season with a two-game winning streak and moved St. Mary’s College to 9-7 overall and 5-1 in league play, according to the official recap and box score. Cedar Crest fell to 4-10 and 1-5.
The seed matters. The Seahawks, two-time defending United East champions, will host a semifinal at noon Saturday, Oct. 31, at Jamie L. Roberts Stadium in St. Mary’s City, facing either No. 3 seed Lancaster Bible College or No. 6 seed Cedar Crest. That puts the program’s title defense on home turf, days after SMCM routed Lancaster Bible 5-1 in the teams’ regular-season meeting.
Six different Seahawks had a hand in the three goals.
An early strike, then a wall
Sophomore forward Josie Mascolo, a Leonardtown native and St. Mary’s Ryken graduate, needed just 73 seconds to open the scoring. She took a pass from senior midfielder Tori Hampton of Frederick and drove a shot into the left side of the cage. It was Mascolo’s seventh goal of the season, and it came days after she scored twice against Lancaster Bible.
After that, Cedar Crest dug in. Falcons goalkeeper Shelby Heater finished with 13 saves, nine of them in the third quarter alone, and the score held at 1-0 deep into the fourth.
Sophomore forward Kristina Wujciak of Gainesville, Virginia, finally broke it open at 57:27, one-timing a feed from senior midfielder Safi Stimely, a Linthicum resident who played at Broadneck High School in Anne Arundel County. It was Wujciak’s second goal of the year.
With two seconds left, St. Mary’s College earned one more penalty corner. Sophomore midfielder Morgan Knott of Denton inserted the ball, and sophomore defender Julie Presgraves of Frederick blasted it into the back of the goal at 59:58 for her fourth of the season.
By the numbers
The shot chart was lopsided. SMCM outshot Cedar Crest 26-1 and held a 17-1 edge in shots on goal. The Seahawks also earned 10 penalty corners to the Falcons’ two.
| Team stats | SMCM | Cedar Crest |
|---|---|---|
| Goals | 3 | 0 |
| Shots | 26 | 1 |
| Shots on goal | 17 | 1 |
| Saves | 1 | 13 |
| Penalty corners | 10 | 2 |
| Fouls | 2 | 7 |
- Scoring: Mascolo (Hampton) 1:13; Wujciak (Stimely) 57:27; Presgraves (Knott) 59:58.
- Mascolo: 6 shots, 5 on goal, 1 goal.
- Junior forward Olivia Schwendeman of Marriottsville: 6 shots.
- Presgraves: 2 shots, 2 on goal, 1 goal. Knott: 2 shots, 1 assist.
- Cedar Crest: Ava Hendricks took the Falcons’ only shot, in the fourth quarter; Heater made 13 saves and Courtney Gibbons made one defensive save in the first period.
Junior goalkeeper Sophia Kent of Chesterville, a Gunston School graduate, needed only one save for her fourth clean sheet of the season. It was a quiet afternoon compared with her 18-save effort in a 4-0 loss at No. 3 Christopher Newport. Kent and teammate Mastrangelo also swept United East weekly honors earlier this month.
Up next
St. Mary’s College hosts its United East semifinal at noon Saturday, Oct. 31, at Jamie L. Roberts Stadium against the winner between No. 3 Lancaster Bible and No. 6 Cedar Crest. Conference championship tickets are sold through the Hudl app, a change the league announced earlier this month.
