BIDDEFORD — Gorham High’s field hockey team knew the pain of an overtime playoff loss.
Tuesday night the Rams discovered the joy of winning in overtime in the playoffs, avenging last year’s OT exit against Biddeford in the process.
With 3:56 left in the first eight-minute overtime, with a mist getting heavier on a foggy night, Brooke Farquhar scored, giving No. 7 Gorham a 2-1 Class A South quarterfinal win against No. 2 Biddeford at Waterhouse Field.
In overtime, four players from each team are removed from the field, making it a 7-on-7 game with the intent of opening space and creating more scoring chances.
Hannah Bickford, taking a pass from Annabelle Collier, used that extra space to move the ball to the center of the field, beat a defender, and send the ball forward to Farquhar. Gorham’s leading goal scorer, Farquhar had taken a hard pass off her right hand earlier in the game. If she was feeling any pain it didn’t show.
Farquhar buried a hard shot that banged off the wooden left side of the goal.
“It was a total team effort. Annabelle (Collier) right to Hannah, right through the defense and then it was just one-on-one,” Farquhar said. “It was more of like an instinct. You see the goalie and you just know that’s where you’re supposed to go (with the shot). It barely went in.”
Gorham (10-5-1) will be on the road for Saturday’s regional semifinal against the winner of the No. 6 Windham at No. 3 Scarborough quarterfinal, which was postponed to Thursday.
Biddeford finished 12-3.
Scoring chances were few for both teams. After regulation goalies Cadence Goulet of Biddeford and Madison Tibbals of Gorham each had four saves, with Goulet coming up with the toughest stops. Each team had scored once in four penalty corner attempts. In the regular season, Biddeford beat Gorham, 1-0, and last year the Tigers needed a second overtime to stop Gorham, also in the quarterfinal.
“We knew going into this that we were very evenly matched,” said Biddeford Coach Caitlin Tremberth. “We knew in the playoffs it could be the matter of one play.”
It appeared Biddeford sophomore Ayla Lagassse had made that play when she inserted a fourth-quarter penalty corner and then worked her way in front to tip in a shot attempt by standout freshman Kayla Magnant to give the Tigers a 1-0 lead with 10:17 to play.
With 6:39 left, Gorham took a timeout.
“I just said, ‘Hey, seven minutes is a long time,” said Gorham Coach Becky Manson-Rioux. “They believe in themselves and they really proved it by going down there and getting that corner. They really believed that they could do it and just didn’t give up.”
Sure enough, Gorham worked possession in Biddeford’s end and earned its own penalty corner. Senior captain Ellie Szostalo sent the ball in to Bickford, who got it to Farquhar, who sent the ball to the back post. A sprawling Goulet could not reach Szostalo’s tying tip-in with 5:04 left.
“This team, especially this year, we have done so well with coming back when we have been scored on and we wanted this so much,” Szostola said.
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