By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Heather Farlow felt confident as her Princeton Day School field hockey team headed to overtime in its state Prep B tournament opening round game against Stuart Country Day School on Wednesday.
The teams took the field for the seven-on-seven overtime and the Panthers were prepared.
“It is something that we practice pretty frequently in terms of talking about situations,” said Farlow, the Panthers’ first-year head coach. “I don’t have 22 players to scrimmage full field so we’re always playing short. So they are pretty comfortable with it.”
Madison Mundenar scored 28 seconds into the overtime to lift the Panthers to the win. Fourth-seeded PDS will now face top-seeded Montclair Kimberley in the semifinals next Wednesday.
“It’s awesome,” Mundenar said. “I think we can really build on this.”
The win lifted PDS to 5-11-1 on the season. But more importantly, the Panthers are 4-1-1 in their last six games.
“This win is great momentum for the upcoming games,” said freshman Val Radvany, who had a goal and an assist in regulation. “We really wanted to get far in the preps and this is a great boost for our confidence.
“Our record didn’t really show what we could do. I think this winning streak has helped boost our confidence a lot. I knew that we could win. We all just went out and tried our best. We’re all really good friends and we work well together as a team. I think the team unity has really helped us.”
The Panthers led, 1-0, at halftime on a goal by Katie Shih. But Stuart responded with a Sam Servis goal in the second half to tie the game. After Radvany gave the Panthers the lead again, Stuart tied it on a goal by Ellie Widger.
That set the stage for overtime and the winning goal by Mundenar.
“We just needed to finish and let our hard work pay off,” Farlow said. “I told them it was 0-0 and they hadn’t lost the game. I think they were a little upset about the second goal so we just wanted to come out and go hard.
“We’re young and you don’t want to be overconfident or insecure. You want to have just the right balance of confidence and competitiveness. I think for some of us, after we scored one we thought it was going to be done. And then after we scored two we thought it was going to be done. So we had to dig a little deeper today.”
The Panthers will face a tough test against top-seeded MKA. But the last six games have proven the team can be successful.
“Confidence and playing together like a team and letting the ball do the work has made a difference,” Farlow said. “We’ve always focused on the team concept. We didn’t need anybody to be a hero.
“(Tuesday) we practiced shooting for close to an hour so I am glad that it paid off. I told her right before overtime we need to get a corner or you need to just hit it and get the shot off because you’ll be surprised what happens.”
