Despite Katie Clemmer’s two-goal performance on Saturday night, Dec. 5, the Yarmouth/Freeport/Gray-New Gloucester Clippers couldn’t keep hold of a contest in which they only trailed for 17 seconds. A resilient Brunswick squad chewed through a pair of deficits to force sudden death, where Dragon Jenna Brooks earned her second of the night and sank the Clippers, 6-5.
Clippers head coach Megan Vaughan was disappointed in the result. “We collapsed,” she said. “We tried playing individually toward the end of the game – players tried to do it all on their own. You can’t do that at a high school level.”
Brunswick jumped on top early, Jenna Brooks fed Beth Labbe for a left-side jab past Clippers netminder Miranda O’Shea; 17 seconds later, however, Clemmer responded, unassisted, for 1-1.
Ten taut minutes passed before Clemmer broke the stalemate, hashing her second on a give by Keeley Arnold. Not long after that, Kelsey Meyer, assisted by Colleen Sullivan, put the Clippers up 3-1 on a low wrister from the left side. At the end of the first, Yarmouth/Freeport/G-NG looked firmly in control.
Vaughan described what went right for her girls. “We’ve been working on passing the puck and trusting each other,” she said. “We did that pretty well tonight. We were pretty aggressive, winning battles in the corners, so that was working well for us.”
The Dragons, however, refused to be slain. Victoria Stevens (assists to Tessa Cassidy and Labbe) grabbed one back for Brunswick roughly five and a half minutes into the second, and Brooks (from Labbe) balanced the scoreboard at three-all shortly thereafter.
Another long, tense stretch elapsed. Finally, with time winding toward the break, Arnold gave the Clippers their lead back, assisted by Sullivan. 4-3.
Vaughan pushed her girls during the intermission not to ease up: “[I told them], ‘Don’t slow down for a minute, because they can come back’ – like they did. You’ve got to be aggressive all the time, and play the body.”
A pair of rapid-fire Dragons infractions put the team down, five men to three, five minutes into the third. The Clippers, in control on the attack and determined to capitalize, squeezed their formation tighter and tighter into the Brunswick zone.
A Clippers goal seemed inevitable, and Kyaira Grondin (Georgia Giese) eventually did the honors, flipping a shot from the left side. The puck deflected up, high into the air, before tumbling down again, over the outstretched glove of Dragons goalie Jordann Van Savage and behind her, into the net. 5-3.
Down by two once again, with just eight and a half to play, Brunswick nevertheless clawed back. Labbe, assisted by Brooks and Rayna Sage, cut the Clippers’ lead to one with 6:53 to play, and Sage from Brooks – with just 1:26 remaining – posted a powerplay point for 5-5.
Suckered into OT, the Clippers were perhaps suffering a bit of shellshock, of which the Dragons were more than happy to take advantage. Brooks needed no assistance to score just 1:16 into sudden death.
Asked what she told her girls after the disheartening loss, Vaughan answered wryly: “‘Coach know best,’” she said, before elaborating: “It was just, ‘You’ve got to trust each other, you have to play as a team, you have to play smart.’”
The Clippers began their season with two big wins, but have dropped four straight since then. Still, their talent level is high, and the slump is likely just a flukey stretch, not an indicator of the squad’s prospects for the season as a whole.
“We definitely have some strong players and a strong team,” Vaughan said. The Clippers travel to Falmouth on Wednesday, Dec. 9.
The Clippers’ Kelsey Meyer cuts up-ice against visiting Brunswick on Saturday evening.
Clipper Keeley Arnold drives between a Dragons opponent and the boards in pursuit of a puck.
Yarmouth/Freeport/G-NG’s Jenny Holmquist rides a Dragon into the boards during Saturday evening’s contest.
Clippers netminder Mirando O’Shea dives after the puck, lest an incoming Brunswicker pick it up.
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