The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

55 |Thursday October 19, 2017 | OAKVILLE BEAVER |www.insidehalton.com Kevin Nagel, Oakville Beaver Sports Editor, knagel@burlingtonpost.com Sports "Connectedtoyour Community" Loyola Hawks a contender following winless year By Herb Garbutt Oakville Beaver staff The first win of the year, 1-0 over A ssum ption, w as a bit of relief. Com ing off a winless field hock ey season in which they scored ju st four goals, the Loyola Hawks were happy to be back in the win column. W hen the Hawks followed that up by beating Notre Dam e and ty ing Corpus Christi -- teams that had a com bined 10-2-2 record the previous year -- well, the players suddenly started believing that their assistant coach's pre-season talk of OFSAA w asn't so far fetched. "They were playing hard and they got a couple o f big w ins early and they kept feedin g on that energy," said Loyola coach V anessa C outu, w hose team clinch ed secon d place in the Halton C atholic A thletic A ssociatio n stan din gs w ith a 2-2 tie again st St. T h om as A quin as on Monday. Loyola finished the season with a 5-1-2 record, scoring more than five times as m any goals as they did the previous season. The H awks' lone loss o f the season came last week against first-place Bishop Reding. Trailing 2-1, the Hawks thought they had scored the tying goal. "The goalie scooped it out o f the net before the referee saw it and he told us to play on," said Loyola's Courtney Wilson. "That goal Loyola's Juliana Pizzolato (left) battles a St. Thomas Aquinas opponent for possession of the ball during Monday's Halton Catholic Athletic Association senior girls' field hockey game at St Thomas Aquinas. Loyola clinched second place, earning a 2-2 tie with the Raiders. | photo by Graham Paine - Oakville Beaver would have tied it up and after that we kind o f felt defeated." The Hawks have come a long way this season and they showed their ability to learn from their experiences. After having an early goal called back against Aquinas, W ilson scored late in the first half to give the Hawks the lead. Aquinas tied it in the second half but W ilson restored Loyola's lead, spinning and firing a shot for her second of the game. A quinas tied it up again with four m inutes to play but Loyola pressed for the winner, nearly scoring on a short corner in the final minute. Though the Hawks w ould have liked to finish the season with a win, the strides the Hawks have taken have been impressive. "We really didn't have any expec tations. I knew the skill level of the Grade 11s com ing in," said Coutu, who coached Loyola's juniors to a 3-3-1 record and a quarter-final up set o f Oakville Trafalgar last year. "We didn't know how they would w ork together with the Grade 12s, but they're gelling well as a team and playing as a unit." Loyola has done it with a rela tively inexperienced team. "None o f us play outside of school," W ilson said. "I ju st started in Grade 9 and I loved it. We've got a pretty solid back line, we're quick so we can move the ball up the lines and our goalie (Sophia Smith) stands on her head." Smith held off Aquinas early when the Raiders had a string of short corners. Julian a Pizzolato and Hannah Schelfahut did a good jo b clearing the front of the net and Loyola transitioned the ball quick ly up the field where M addy Hayes, Allejandra Galindo, Ju lia Semple and W ilson created good scoring chances. "We're not a team that relies on one or two players," Coutu said. The Hawks will now face the test of carrying their regular-season success into the playoffs. Regard less of whether they can carry that all the way to OFSAA, the Haw ks' season already has to be considered a success. "It's cool to see how far we've come since Grade 9," W ilson said, "to see our development and how m uch we've im proved." Blades lose pairfollowingseven-gamewinningstreak, play Burlington tomorrow Com ing off a pair o f defeats in cluding a 4-3 overtime loss to the Toronto Patriots last Saturday, the Oakville Blades are back in action tomorrow (Friday). Oakville heads to Burlington for a gam e at Appleby Ice Centre at 7:30 p.m. Com bined with last Friday's loss to the North York Rangers that ended their winning streak at sev en gam es, the Blades will attempt to stop a short losing streak against the Cougars. The Patriots tied Saturday's gam e with 3:23 to play and then scored in overtime to edge the Blades 4-3. Peyton Reeves' had given Oakville a 3-2 lead early in the third period of the Ontario Junior Hockey League game but the Pa triots rallied to hand Oakville its second straight loss. O akville native M ichael Boushy, acquired by the Patriots earlier this w eek, scored a sh ort h anded goal to p u t Toronto up 1-0 m idw ay through the first pe riod. Zach Bram w ell tied it up before the end o f the period and M att H ayam i gave the Blades a 2-1 lead in the second. Toronto tied it before the end of the second. Oakville had a late rally come up short against the Rangers last Fri day. D ow n 3-0 w ith fou r m in u tes to play, the B lad es got on the board w ith J e f f C lark 's pow erp lay goal and S p e n cer K ersten 's late m arker w ith O akville goalie C h ris E llio t p u lled for an extra attacker. Elliot made 27 saves in a losing cause.