Defense steals the show for No. 1 Broadneck field hockey

With Broadneck’s No. 1 field hockey team outscoring the opposition by an average of 5.9 goals, it’s not easy for the defense to grab the spotlight.

On Wednesday night against No. 5 Crofton, however, Chloe Page’s stellar performance against the Cardinals’ penalty corners stole the show.

The sophomore’s quick rush to the ball kept Cardinals scoreless on 15 corners. The offense did the rest in a 5-1 victory that continued a spectacular run for the Bruins, who improved to 9-0 overall and 3-0 in Anne Arundel County.

“She saved our butts,” said Bruins senior Arden Hunteman. “The scoreboard could have looked a lot different without her flying on corners.”

Page disrupted at least half of those corners, often getting to the ball before the Cardinals could shoot. She also blocked at least three shots off those corners.

“I didn’t stress over it at all,” Page said. “I just go when the ball goes, so I don’t worry about what they’re going to do. I don’t try to read them, so it makes everything easier.”

To Bruins coach Shannon Hanratty, Page had the pivotal performance of the game.

“Sometimes you are really happy if a kid gets one or two a game,” she said. “To get that many against such a good player on the other team. I think a lot of [the corner passes] were going to Kylie (Corcoran) and Emily (Najarian). Those are great players and to get that stop that many times, those were game-changing stops. To deny them even taking the shots was huge for us.”

Page, a hurdler on the track team, isn’t the only Bruin with speed. The Bruins’ motto, “All gas, no brakes,” is evident all over the field.

Their overall team speed has been the hardest thing for opponents to counter as Broadneck has rolled past four Top 10 teams while outscoring their nine opponents, 59-6. In addition to Crofton, they’ve also beaten then-No. 1 Archbishop Spalding, 4-1; then-No. 4 Glenelg, 5-1, and No. 7 River Hill, 6-1.

“Their speed is what beat us,” Crofton coach Amy Skrickus said. “We have some girls who are fast, but every single person on that team was fast and we didn’t adjust. We’ve seen some fast teams with one or two girls, but we haven’t seen that. We just couldn’t get it started soon enough.”

The Bruins wanted to strike quickly, especially after last year when Crofton, a first-year program, beat them 3-2.

“We definitely had that just kind of lingering in the back of our minds and motivating us to push forward,” said midfielder Maya Everett.

Hunteman got the Bruins on the board even faster than they might have expected, scoring off a crossing pass from Jess Kopernick less than three minutes into the game. With 8:23 left in the first quarter, Faith Everett made it 2-0, scoring off the rebound when goalie Ryleigh Osborne stopped her sister Maya’s shot.

“It sets the whole tone, getting those couple goals in the first quarter,” Hunteman said. “It throws them off. It makes us play harder. It controls everything.”

Kopernick boosted the lead to 3-0 late in the half and the Cardinals (5-1, 2-1) rallied just after the break with a goal from Najarian, who got the ball at about the 15-yard line and wove her way in for the goal with 13:43 left in the third quarter.

The Bruins added two more goals in the quarter as Faith Everett and Lexi Dupcak converted crossing passes from Hunteman and Mady Quigley, respectively.

Hanratty, whose team lost in the state Class 4A quarterfinals last season, said her team is well ahead of schedule with five games left in the regular season.

“The things we’ve been doing really well early in the season are typically things that we hope to get by the end of the season,” she said, “but our chemistry that carried over from last year is just making us move the ball really well and play as a team and so when we execute those skills early in a game and we have a lot of speed and pressure going forward, we’re able to kind of knock one in and sort of maybe push a team back on their heels and then we never stop.”

NO. 1 BROADNECK, 5; NO. 5 CROFTON, 1

C: 0, 0, 1, 0 — 1

B: 2, 1, 2, 0 — 5

GOALS: C — Emily Najarian; B — Faith Everett, 2; Arden Hunteman, Jess Kopernick, Lexi Dupcak.

ASSISTS: C — None; B — Jess Kopernick, Arden Hunteman, Mady Quigley.

SAVES: C — Ryleigh Osborne, 8; B — Mia Moody, 4.

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