Spartans Complete Postseason Run with a Title

WOBURN – Uxbridge midfielder Amelia Blood placed her stick behind the ball that sat about eight yards away from the mouth of the Ipswich goal line. With both teams tied at zero halfway through the third quarter of the Division 4 state field hockey championship game, the Spartans put all their trust in an eighth-grader to take the penalty stroke to help them break the stalemate on Saturday. 

Standing in Blood’s way was Ipswich goalkeeper Morgan Bodwell, who recorded twelve shutouts and only allowed nine goals all season. Regardless, the Spartans were confident they had the right person taking the shot.

The decision to make Blood the designated penalty stroke shooter was made long before the title game.

“We practice strokes quite a bit in practice,” said Uxbridge head coach Kelly Rosborough after the game. “Our goalie [Jessica Lutton] was always commenting on

how she had such a deceptive stroke. She had a good fake. I kept hearing our goalie say that.”

Rosborough also consulted Amelia’s mom, Jody Blood, who was also the team’s assistant coach, about allowing Amelia to take penalty strokes. “I had said to her, ‘do you think Amelia is ready to take on a penalty stroke in a game?’ and she said, ‘yeah, she’s ready.’ And she was. She’s made all three this season.”

With her stick behind the ball, the lefty shooter stared down at it and then glanced out of the corner of her left eye at Bodwell. The goalkeeper stood ready with her knees bent, her left glove out and her stick up.

“I was so scared,” Blood said after the game. “But I knew … I knew I could do it.”

More importantly, the senior captains of the team, Chloe Kaeller, Grace Boisvert, and Gracie Nummela, were confident in their young teammate.

“We trust her,” Boisvert said. “We practice strokes every single day and she hits it every time.”

“We are all confident in Amelia,” Nummela said. “She nails it every time.”

“We believe in her,” Kaeller said.

The eighth-grader with the left shot bent her legs and stared back down at the ball with her feet placed about hip-width apart. She took a deep breath. As she turned her left to gauge the goalie, she placed her left leg back with only her toes touching the ground, opening her hips slightly to the left. Could she be telegraphing a shot to the goalie’s stick-side? Perhaps Bodwell thought she was, because as Blood lifted her leg up to move into her shooting motion, the goalkeeper cheated slightly to her stick-side right.

“Yes, I fake it one way and then I go the other,” Blood said about her movements prior to the stroke. “I turn my body left and then I push it right.”

When Blood’s left leg came down, she did indeed push it to the goalkeeper’s glove-side. “I get low and I use all my leg power,” she said. “I practice it in my free time.” By the time Bodwell realized where the ball was headed, she was leaning the wrong way and it was too late for her to

recover. The ball zoomed past her glove as she tried to dive back to her left in vain. 

Blood turned, raised her stick in the air and ran into the enthusiastic arms of her teammates. “When it went in, I was so excited,” she said. “I just started to celebrate and jump up and down.” 

The Spartans were on the board with what would prove to be the game-winner. Blood’s stroke clinched the first field hockey title in Uxbridge High School history. 

“She’s confident in herself and that’s her specialty skill,” Rosborough said. “She’s been working on it. That was her third penalty stroke for us this season and she scored on everyone. She’s now three for three.”

“Honestly, it was such a good feeling,” Nummela said. “Once the ball was in the net, it was like, wow! It gave us hope that we could get this. We can keep this up. We can really take this championship.”

“We really needed the momentum of the goal to keep us going,” Boisvert said. 

“I think, before the goal, we believed we could, but once we got that goal, we knew we could take this,” Kaeller said.

At the start of the game, Ipswich came ready to play. They had the Spartans initially back on their heels, forcing Lutton to make a few saves until they could figure out what the Tigers were doing. 

“They came out with a great game plan against us,” Rosborough said. “They pressed us high. They gave us a lot of pressure and forced us to make mistakes. So, kudos to them. We had to adjust to it.

The tides turned in the Spartan’s favor toward the end of the first quarter when they were able to force the play in the Tigers’ end. “We just kind of got in the game,” Rosborough said. “We just got a feel for what they were giving us and the girls had to problem solve and figure it out and that’s what they did.”

Rosborough said her team used long passes to force Ipswich to back off their high press. “We tried to force the big hit. It didn’t always work, but it seemed to get them to back off a little bit here and there. Sometimes you have to just try to squeeze it through. We also needed some of our players to cut back and cut in front of them to open up a tunnel to help the ball get through and it worked well against a good press.”

The long balls led to some consistent offensive attacks in the Ipswich end, led by the Spartans top-scorer, Kaeller. They were able to mount consistent pressure which led to nearly a dozen corner opportunities to Ipswich’s four. The Spartans dominated the majority of the possessions with the play of Kaeller, along with forwards Kendall Gilmore, Ellie Bouchard, and Tessa Johnston, and backed by midfielders Julianna Casucci and Nummela.

The midfielders, led by Nummela, also kept the center of the field protected as the Spartans forced most of Ipswich’s rushes along the sidelines. When the Tigers

were able to get into the Spartan’s defensive zone, the Uxbridge defenders, led by Boisvert at the center back position, aggressively attacked the Ipswich forwards.

“It came full circle for us in this game,” Rosborough said. “Amelia may have hit the stroke, but I would say the three seniors were the heart out there. Grace Boisvert from the center D spot gave us strength back there. Up the middle, Gracie Nummela had an all-star game. And Chloe was just in the fight up front for us. I just think they’re leaders. Their desire to want this for their team and their community showed. It was high stakes. There’s a lot of noise. There’s a lot of fans here today, and they just had the run of the field.”

“Speaking on behalf of the defense, our strategy was definitely playing our game and holding our own,” Boisvert said. “Ipswich came in with a lot of body and a lot of stick hacking … So, we just played clean, up-the-field hockey that we’ve been taught to play since day one as our main strategy. In addition, to just keep possession of the ball and be smart and have good vision of the field. We also capitalized on communication, which is something that is a big part of our gameplay.” 

Speaking for the offense, Kaeller said “we were getting a lot of pressure and we were playing tightly in the beginning, but we adjusted to it and then once we adjusted, we could play our game and keep the pressure on them.” 

Lutton also came up with eight saves for the Spartans in the game. She finished the season with a total of fifteen shutouts, including four in the postseason. In fact, she did not allow any balls to get by her during the playoffs. Against Ipswich, she made a huge save at the end of the first quarter off a breakaway and she also made three big kick saves in a row during a brief Ipswich surge in the fourth quarter to preserve the one goal lead. 

“If the defense got beat, she wasn’t gonna let Ipswich get it,” Nummela said. “She really helped us out there because she is our last line of defense and she was there to support us all the way through. She was confident in her stops and we were confident she was going to clear it out of the circle.”

“It’s very high intensity in that defensive circle,” Boisvert said. “She always uses directional communication in the defensive circle, telling people where to go … She’s also very aggressive too, and steps to balls and really takes initiative in there, which definitely helped us.”

When the final horn went off, Uxbridge finished the season 24-0-2, outscoring their postseason opponents 23-0. 

“This is a big deal,” Uxbridge athletic director Christopher Carbone said. “I mean this is truly amazing. Their hard work, dedication, and perseverance all year paid off. They’ve been clicking on all cylinders since preseason and working for the state title.”

“It’s the greatest feeling in the world,” Boisvert said. “I think that our coach really pushed us this season. She was never satisfied and I think that’s why we went as far as we did. We always just push 110 percent and we played every game like it was our last.”

Except for a couple of Super Bowl wins in football in the early 90s, the only other state champion in school history was the 1915 basketball team.

“We made history today,” Nummela said. “We put Uxbridge on the map.”

“I’m literally so proud of this team,” Kaeller said. “Yeah, we really showed up and we made history.”

When the final seconds ticked off the clock, Blood, the eighth-grader with the only goal of the game said, “I was crying. I was so excited.”