By Matt Stout
Staff Writer

 

MANCHESTER – Two months ago, Alice Townsend and her Derryfield School field hockey teammates read article after article in local newspapers detailing how the Cougars were rebuilding this year.

They spent game after game proving them wrong.

With a 3-1 win over seventhseeded Newport on Saturday, Oct. 21, Derryfield earned a trip to the Class M-S tournament semifinals for the fourth straight year, where it was scheduled to face sixth-seeded Winnisquam on Wednesday, Oct. 25.

Yet the Cougars, minus 12 graduates from last year’s team that lost to Berlin, 1-0, in the state finals, showed they were a team to be reckoned with long before that.

Derryfield’s 13-win regular season was the best in program history, not to mention the best in Class M-S along with Mascoma and Newfound Regional, who both stood at 13-1 as well.

The first-half goal it allowed to Newport was just the third it’s ceded this season, and Derryfield was one of just five teams in the league to score eight or more goals twice during the regular season, including the only Class S school to do so.

DS is rebuilding? Someone forgot to tell the Cougars.

“I think we feel like we have unfinished business,” said Townsend, a Bedford native, of last year’s title-game loss. “We should have won, and we still feel like that. We dominated, and I don’t know if the pressure got to us or what.

“But I think from the start we had an attitude that we could go all the way and that we were a great team,” she added. Despite the loss of a handful of starters to graduation, the Cougars have continued winning with a well-organized defense and attack to boot.

Bedford’s Charlotte Evans and Jessica Ginsberg help lead in back with Natalie Coviello.

Hooksett’s Julia Maldonado provides an offensive spark in the midfield with Hilary Fink and Townsend, helping to set up a pair of electric scorers up front.

Katherine DiPastina scored once against Newport to up her team-leading total to 24 goals through 15 games, and Bedford’s Alison Fink – no relation to Hilary – scored twice, including the game-winner.

“We’ve been rewarding ourselves,” said Derryfield coach Lenny McCaigue. “Four (of five) forwards were on the forward line last year, and that year’s experience has helped them.”